The Fire In Her Eyes
by OurLadyGrem
Summary: Forced to meet for the first time under disastrous circumstances, Anti-Cosmo and Anti-Wanda agree to a risky deal and inadvertently make their time at Anti-Fairy Academy an interesting one. However, they gradually come to realize that love in a society of anti-fairies is a dangerous thing...
1. Tool

**Title:** The Fire In Her Eyes

**Disclaimer:** I don't own the show.

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_Forced to meet for the first time under disastrous circumstances, Anti-Cosmo and Anti-Wanda agree to a risky deal and inadvertently make their time at Anti-Fairy Academy an interesting one. However, they gradually come to realise that love in a society of anti-fairies is a dangerous thing..._

Rated T for slightly mature language and themes.

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Chapter One :: _Tool_

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While the Fairy Academy in Fairy World stands, there exists an Anti-Fairy Academy. As every fairy had their beginnings, so did the anti-fairies. And they all began here...

Anti-Fairy Academy. It was a building in complete opposition to it's counterpart in almost every way. It was as if fairy-tales of villainous castles and eerie scenic atmospheres had been solely inspired by it, and had practically invented the immaculate architecture of the Gothic period. The main entrance was almost an exact replica of the Notre Dame in Paris, with beautifully framed stained glass windows embellishing each pointed tower and with intricately decorated stone walls and pillars. Inside each separated building, the arched ceilings were incredibly high and spacious, the hallways were long and narrow, and the stained glass windows illuminated each room with speckles of dark, harsh colours. It was an intimidating set-up to be in. However, for the anti-fairies, this is where they considered home.

While the Fairy Academy was surrounded by beautifully coloured rainbows and sparkling clouds, the Anti-Fairy Academy was like stepping into a war zone. It's walls were heavily guarded with barbed wire as red and black storm clouds circled above it in the sky, and crumbling ruins were scattered around the campus grounds. Despite the pride the anti-fairies took in their flawless architectural designs, they had little to no respect in preserving it. As spotless as everything appeared to be, it wouldn't last long. The destructive nature of anti-fairies would find a way to tear up their own home, create havoc within their own people, and spoil an otherwise flawlessly sinister looking location. Those were simply the kind of students and teachers that attended Anti-Fairy Academy.

So, while the Fairy Academy taught fairies in training on how to become professional godparents, the anti-fairies at Anti-Fairy Academy were taught how to sharpen their skills in causing misfortune to the world. They were soldiers of war that brought forth bad luck whenever it was summoned on Earth. It was a breeding ground for chaos and destruction, nonconformity and rebellion, and the one domineering above it all was none other than Anti-Cosmo.

Since Anti-Cosmo was the polar opposite of his dim-witted counterpart, he predictably excelled with ease in every subject. He was the finest student at the Anti-Fairy Academy, the best of the best. He'd successfully overcome every other anti-fairy in the academy by barely lifting a finger. He was simply the most malicious and destructive student the academy ever had, and he took advantage of this due to his overwhelming knowledge and tenacity to become the highest ranking anti-fairy in the universe. He was determined to take full advantage of his education, as he longed to be first and foremost at the very top of the rest, even amongst the student body. Anti-Cosmo didn't care if he'd have to start from humble beginnings, as long as he started somewhere and conquered whatever he could.

And he knew he could, slowly but surely, take control of that student body. He was already considered to be the most elite out of all the anti-fairies at the academy. Anti-Cosmo was allowed his own stationary studio for private studies, as he had already met his mandatory subjects for the semester. The rest of the time was spent developing on his personal projects. And he took pride in knowing that he had his own room for work, he was proud that his projects were inspiring and influencing the professors and the rest of the faculty, and he wore his nickname as the kingpin as a medal of honour.

Anti-Cosmo was the best, and he knew it.

He had his entire future planned out, with dreams and aspirations of becoming the dictator of his people and ultimately reaping the benefits of total supremacy to himself.

Yet he had no idea that life in the Anti-Fairy Academy would turn this all around, once one particular soul had entered into his world...

…

During the final few weeks of the semester, Anti-Cosmo had confidence in his latest project on the verge of completion. He'd worked hard on a machine that would create disastrous tremors and universal earthquakes on the planet, forcing mirrors to break, pictures to fall from walls and salt to spill to create a mass influx of bad luck upon everyone in one fell swoop. He was pleased with how well it was working, as he had almost caused the entirety of the Anti-Fairy Academy to crumble merely from his tests. He was sure that he'd pass the semester with no problems once it was submitted.

On a late afternoon, Anti-Cosmo was just returning to his post at his own personal studio, situated at the highest point in the highest tower of Anti-Fairy Academy. He had personally picked out this location as it was also the farthest away from the rest of the population, and he could peacefully indulge in his work without any interruptions.

Unluckily for him, he was met with one unexpected interruption that was sure to change his world.

So, as Anti-Cosmo climbed the winding steps up to his studio, he noticed a curious ray of light peeking over the highest steps of the tower and, to his dismay, the door to his studio that he specifically remembered to lock had been pried open. Then, he recognised the smell of burning metal coming through the crack of the door.

"What th-!" Anti-Cosmo whispered under his breath before he bounded up the steps and flung the door wide open.

He took a sharp intake of breath as he looked over the room in complete shock.

"What the hell happened here?!" He shouted in unrelenting fury as he looked upon the fallen ruins of the project he had been meticulously working on throughout the entire semester.

Anti-Cosmo approached it cautiously as he surveyed the area, careful to step over parts of machinery that had been blasted around the room at a distance, and looked on in horror as he saw his project had fallen into itself with faint tinges of smoke floating up to the pointed ceiling. He crouched to the ground and picked up a discarded monkey wrench that had idly been left there. He gripped it tightly as his anger began to rise.

"This has to be sabotage..." He concluded to himself as he inspected the wrench that had been covered in scratches on the end, suspiciously matching the indents on the side of the remaining parts of the machine. "Jealous rivalry, maybe? Or mindless acts of vandalism..."

Anti-Cosmo placed his hand over the cold metal and mourned all of his hard efforts that'd gone to waste, but only for a few moments. He knew he had to fix this mess, he knew that there wasn't any time to get angry about this. He just had to keep a level head and continue his work as normal, as if nothing happened... as if no one had broken into his sanctuary and broken apart his precious workings... as if months and months of work had been undone before his very eyes...

"God _dammit_!" He shouted in fury as he threw the wrench in a rage against the wall. For a few moments, he was breathing heavily with anger, clenching his hands into infuriated fists and gritting his teeth as he watched the wrench create a powerful echo around the room. And after a few more deep breaths and a frustrated hand running over his hair, he finally sighed and mentally scolded himself to calm down. He was better than this, he told himself, and he needed to get a grip and work through this.

His anger was still there, he could feel it creating a cesspool at the bottom of his stomach, and he was more than ready to unleash it upon the world. But he knew he had to cool it, he was determined to keep up the reputation that nothing could ever bother him to this extent. However, being the counterpart of a happy-go-lucky personality that Cosmo withheld made this reputation a lot more difficult than he needed it to be. Anti-Cosmo held his head in irritation for a moment, and let out a long, exasperated sigh.

"I need tea..."

Anti-Cosmo walked over to the other side of the room where he kept his tea bags and his kettle, and nonchalantly filled the kettle in his studio sink. He could do this, Anti-Cosmo thought, once he had his cup of tea then he'd be able to tackle anything that dared to come his way. And as soon as he was about to grab the handle of his mug, he heard a peculiar noise from within the room. He stopped immediately, freezing his motion as his whole body was on high alert, as he heard the sound of rustling echoing off of the walls.

He knew it for certain then. He wasn't alone.

Slowly and cautiously, he broke away from his stiff demeanor and looked over his shoulder to scan the entire room. He observed that there wasn't much in there other than the broken remains of his machine scattered across the room, tools and machinery that had fallen off of the walls and a few broken stained glass windows that emitted natural light into the room. The tower was tall and had expanded above the storm clouds spiraling over the academy, so the Earth's sun had created a soft glow through the coloured windows and speckled the room with pleasant bright rays of light.

Other than that, Anti-Cosmo found that nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary...

"Hello?" A timid sounding voice called from the other side of the room.

Anti-Cosmo flinched. He didn't recognise this voice at all. It was high-pitched, obviously a woman, and her voice cracked halfway through. She sounded terrified.

"Is somebody there? If there is, could you help me out?" She called again as she gained more confidence, and her southern American accent became more prominent the more she spoke, "I, um, I locked myself out on the balcony."

Quickly, Anti-Cosmo turned his head over to the dull coloured metal exit door on the far side of the room leading out to the balcony, and it was then that he recognised a small shadow emitting underneath the crack of the door.

He shuffled against the stone walls of the room as he moved himself closer to the door. As he carefully approached it to inspect the area to see if this voice definitely came from the balcony, Anti-Cosmo pressed his ear against the wall beside the door. He held his breath and listened closely, until he finally heard a small amount of movement on the other side. Whoever was out there was moving around uncomfortably on the spot, despite the balcony being quite spacious, and from the little amount of movement there was, he figured that this woman was about as small as he was.

_Maybe she's an anti-fairy, or a pixie spy..._

"Oh man, I'm so hungry. If there's someone in there, could you get me a sandwich or something? With cheese and ham... and tomato and lettuce..." Her voice trailed off as if she had to pause to visualise it in her mind, and Anti-Cosmo could recognise the gentle sound of smacking lips together.

Anti-Cosmo was stunned. Here was a woman who, presumably, broke into his private studio, destroyed all of his work, then locked herself outside to drool about food. He couldn't quite comprehend what was happening at that moment, as this all seemed too bizarre to even process.

_Who was this woman?_

Then, her voice became more sombre and defeated, and a gentle thud sounded from her head resting up against the door. Her fingers glided down the door, and created a soft metallic squeak as she slid her fingertips over it. When she spoke, her voice was barely recognisable, as she sounded as if she was losing all hope, "Can anyone hear me?"

"I can hear you!" Anti-Cosmo finally replied sternly. He faced the door full on as he crossed his arms, and furrowed his eyebrows at it as if he was ready to scold the door itself.

And as soon as he spoke up, the voice on the balcony let out a gasp of happy surprise.

"Oh... good." She breathed heavily as she sounded relieved to hear him reply, "For a second, I thought I was hearing voices. I've been trapped out here for so long, I thought I was gonna go crazy!"

Suddenly, Anti-Cosmo's pit of rage had began to rise from his stomach as he noticed how nonchalant this woman sounded.

"What are you doing out there in the first place?" He yelled all of a sudden, and he heard her gasp in surprise once again. She sounded as if she didn't expect this kind of reaction. Then, Anti-Cosmo took a step forward as if he was ready to break the door down, whether or not she was standing directly behind it, "Was it you that destroyed my studio and everything in it?!"

The woman stammered nervously, obviously caught off guard by Anti-Cosmo's sudden burst of fury, "I... I don't really know... what to tell you..."

"Tell me the truth!" He yelled as loud as he could through his gritted teeth, "Why the hell are you in my studio?!"

"Uh, um... I'm sorry... um, I c-can't really say..." She stammered all the more as her voice began to break, as if she was on the verge of tears.

"Did someone send you?" Anti-Cosmo pressured her further, as he figured that her vague answers must have meant she had to be doing someone else's dirty work, "Who are you working for? Who asked you to sabotage my work?"

"No one did! I came here by myself..."

"Why?" Anti-Cosmo shouted to her impatiently.

"I-I don't know..." She took a moment to sniff and swallow a gulp, as well as to shake away how frightened she was beginning to sound, "I was just looking at your work... a-and then I wanted to know what it did, so I... um..."

"So you completely destroyed it?!" He yelled in disbelief, and scowled as he figured that she must've been lying.

"No! No, it was an accident, I swear it!" She shouted back to him desperately, "I tried to turn it on... but I didn't know how, so I pushed all these buttons! Then... then..."

"Oh, you bloody idiot!" Anti-Cosmo yelled, holding up his trembling hands in fury and absolute disbelief that this was really happening, and took another angry step towards the door as if his was spitting right against the metal, "What on earth compelled you to touch someone else's unfinished work?!"

"I honestly just wanted to see what it did!" She cried in pure desperation. A soft thud echoed through the room as she pressed her hands against the door, "But then all these parts started falling off, and I tried to fix it..."

A sudden wash of dread overtook Anti-Cosmo as he incredulously stared at the door. He was eerily quiet for a moment, and the voice on the balcony made deep breaths that filled the air and became the only sound they could both hear. Anti-Cosmo, however, felt as if he was too stunned to breathe, and could only stare wide eyed at the door.

"What do you mean you tried to fix it?" He finally asked, and his voice was suspiciously quiet and low-key.

"Uh... um..."

"_Tell me!_" Anti-Cosmo suddenly slammed his fist down against the metal in a burst of anger.

She shrieked in surprise as she fell backwards off of the door, as she was thrown off by the thunderous tremors that Anti-Cosmo had created. Her voice was a little quieter as she had moved farther away on the balcony, but the tonal fear was still very apparent.

"I-I found this wrench, so I tried to fix everything I broke, but it just got worse and worse!" The woman agonizingly cried as she recalled the event, "Nothing I did helped! I tried everything I knew, wh-which isn't a lot I admit, but... I had to do something! Then it started to smell of smoke, and it caught on fire, and... and th-then it exploded!"

Anti-Cosmo was shocked into silence. His fist remained rigidly stiff against the door as his eyes stared vacantly at the metal. He couldn't believe what he was hearing.

"I freaked out. I didn't know what to do, I didn't know how to fix it, so I ran out to the balcony." Her voice sounded as if it was completely wrapped up in depleted misery, and it became so quiet that Anti-Cosmo could barely make her out, "Then the door slammed behind me, and I couldn't open it. Now I'm stuck out here, and you're in there... s-so, will you let me back in?"

Anti-Cosmo stepped back away from the door and let his hand swing back to his side. His bewilderment hadn't wavered as he he raised an eyebrow, and in his denial, he was compelled to ask,

"Are you stupid?"

"Yeah, I am." She replied with no hesitation, before asking him again, "Now will you let me in?"

"Unbelievable." Anti-Cosmo said with wide eyes in a state of shock, as he found himself caught off guard with an answer he didn't expect, "So, after you completely trashed my project that I spent _months _working on that is due in exactly _two _weeks, you still expect me to let you back in here and let you off the hook?"

She had fallen silent for a moment, and in this time Anti-Cosmo assumed that she had realised how ridiculous that all sounded. Then she unpredictably replied a little cheerfully than expected,

"Does that mean you will?"

Anti-Cosmo sighed, and he felt as if he actually was conversing with the door itself. He covered his face with his hand and shook his head in complete disbelief.

"You really are stupid." He commented truthfully, and he found himself without any energy to shout at her any further. He concluded that it would simply be a waste of breath.

"I already told you that I am." She stated naturally, then her voice became a little childlike and innocent, "My mama used to say stupid is as stupid does."

"Apparently." He replied sarcastically.

Anti-Cosmo glanced back over his shoulder towards his studio. He realised that he had too much work to do to spend his precious time arguing with a mysterious woman locked on his balcony. And after giving himself a moment to restart his train of thought, he finally concluded that he knew what to do at that point. He stretched outwards to crack his knuckles, and loosened his muscles by rolling his shoulders before casually telling her,

"You may as well get comfortable, because you're going to stay there for a while."

"Are... are you gonna send for help?" She asked with hope apparent in her voice.

Anti-Cosmo waved his hand dismissively as he returned to the side of his machine to closely inspect the damage.

"No, nothing like that." He simply told her, and placed his hand over the ruins of his machine, "I'll just leave you there until you starve."

"What?!" She cried. Suddenly, the door loudly thudded as she pressed herself desperately against the metal, "You're going to let me die... just because I wrecked your machine by accident?"

"It doesn't matter to me if it was an accident or not," Anti-Cosmo told her plainly without having to look up from his work, "You destroyed my work. You've put a hindrance in my progress for world domination. To put it simply, you've made the unfortunate mistake of messing with the wrong person."

The woman made a shuffling noise, as if she was uncomfortably moving on the spot as she sounded to be uneasy by his words. Then, Anti-Cosmo turned back to face the door again as his voice became very cold and unfeeling, and his eyes grew dark and vacant,

"And don't think for a second that I'm joking. I hold a very powerful position in this academy, and I can very easily make someone disappear without a trace."

She swallowed a hard gulp as he said that. Anti-Cosmo almost grinned by her reaction. These were the up sides of being a criminal, he found, when he asserted his dominance over those who feared him. And he loved the overwhelming power that it brought. It made all the meticulous planning from the shadows much more worthwhile.

"You're evil..." She said quietly, and Anti-Cosmo could have sworn that she sounded almost as if she was amused by all this. He shrugged this off as he turned back to his work.

"Believe me, this is me being merciful." Anti-Cosmo told her honestly.

While Anti-Cosmo intensely worked around his project, mapping out his plans on new sheets of blueprints and picking up the pieces scattered around it, the woman remained silent. Anti-Cosmo figured she must have started to realise the gravity of the situation and must've given up trying to fight him. But Anti-Cosmo found that he was surprised by how quickly she had given into him, as he was expecting at least a little bit of struggle on her end, and was almost disappointed with how short their banter had lasted. He didn't dwell on it for too long, though, and he dived into the complexity of his work. He had a busy few weeks ahead of him, and he was determined not to let anyone interrupt him.

However, his attention was diverted back over to her as he heard the sound of the woman sliding down against the door. She fell silent again for a moment, and Anti-Cosmo figured that was it, but was distracted by her once again when he heard a small whisper come from behind the door.

"I'm really sorry." She began, and her voice was cracked as if she choked on the words, "I didn't mean for this to happen, and I honestly tried to fix it. I'm just... too stupid to know how."

Anti-Cosmo didn't expect this at all. He'd expected her to protest and struggle against him, he believed that anyone in her position would be begging him to let them go at this point, but he certainly hadn't expected for her to still be hung up on what she had done to him. In fact, he hadn't expected her to be so apologetic at all, considering that he had just told her that he intended to end her life. He figured that would rile a person up a bit. Yet the more he thought about it, the more he surprisingly found that he was actually quite curious about her.

Once he realised this, he paused from his work. He looked up from his blueprints, held on to his pencil tightly and let his eyes wander over to the door. He looked at the shadow streaming into the room through the crack of the door. She wasn't moving around as much anymore, he observed.

She caught his attention all the more as she continued with her painfully melancholic voice,

"I don't want you to be mad at me. If you still are... I want you to know I tried my best to undo everything I did. I never wanted to break anything, I don't really know what I was thinking... and I especially didn't want to mess anything up. What a surprise though, I ended up doing that anyway." Her voice was barely a whisper as she finally choked out in silent sobs, "I'm sorry... I'm really sorry... I'm... so, so sorry..."

Anti-Cosmo winced.

Suddenly, he gritted his teeth as he bit back any sympathetic feelings he may or may not have for her. He wondered why he was feeling uneasy about this whole thing, and how he could let his dominance waver for even a moment. It was perplexing, but it was also worrying. He shook his head as if to shake away the feeling of unsteadiness. He had to hold on to his anger, he mentally scolded himself, he had to go through with this.

_Think about what she did to your project, to your studio..._

He pressed his lips together as a troubled expression took over his face, and clenched his fists with internal struggle. He was determined to concentrate on his work and his work alone... but the fact that he could still hear her sniffing and apologising under her breath wasn't helping matters at all. And he refused to acknowledge how unstable he felt about this all of a sudden.

"Please be quiet while I'm working. Can't you slowly die of starvation in silence?" He persisted as he masked his desperation to keep her at arm's length.

"I can't. I get really chatty when I'm hungry. It's the only way to keep my mind off of food." Then, her voice became louder as she leant against the door, and she softly pleaded, "If I'm gonna die, will you at least talk to me?"

Anti-Cosmo felt as if he was going to snap the pencil in half in his fist.

There was no avoiding it. He knew that if he was really going to go through with this, then he had to keep her busy. He had no choice, he finally realised, he had to indulge her.

However, it wasn't as if he was entirely against the idea of talking to her either. In fact, his curiosity about her heightened all the more when she asked to talk to him. She was a mystery, Anti-Cosmo knew that, and it almost confounded him by how she seemed so nonchalant and apologetic about this whole situation. He was interested in the kind of person he had accidentally captured on his balcony, and he felt it wouldn't be too much of a bother for him to learn a little more about what kind of person she is.

Although he refused to acknowledge how he shivered at the sound of her voice elongating each word she said as she pleaded to him.

"Alright," Anti-Cosmo finally agreed and wiped away the perspiration from his forehead with his arm, "I'll talk to you... as long as you stop complaining."

"Sure." She replied softly, and for now she sounded happy.

Anti-Cosmo returned to his work and quickly dived back into his sketches and blueprints. He noticed how erratic his drawings had suddenly become, and he nervously stopped to restart his train of thought. There was no way this woman would have him so unsettled, it was completely out of character for him. Yet the evidence was down on paper in the form of sporadic scribblings and rushed pencil lines. He grabbed his head as he calmed himself down and breathed deeply, determined to get back to his peace of mind.

Then his ears picked up once he heard a soft sound of humming coming from the door.

Unbelievable, he thought, that she was actually starting to enjoy herself out there. Anti-Cosmo squinted his eyes to stare harder at his work, and tried his best to ignore the musical sounds that echoed through the room.

"It's pretty up here." She commented finally, and her voice quickly rose more cheerfully, "You like working so high above the rest of the academy?"

"Of course I do." He told her with a snarl, "It keeps me away from idiots like you."

Anti-Cosmo had hoped that this would have put her off of him, and she'd feel more compelled to keep quiet and keep herself at a distance. However, he flinched when he heard her laugh instead. How peculiar, he found, that what he said had been perceived as hilarious. Then he noted how her laughter was as loud as her voice, as if this woman had a naturally hearty personality that told him that she's the kind of person who laughs quite a lot.

There were times when Anti-Cosmo prided himself on how sharp he was when reading someone for the first time, where he could learn about a person's strengths and weaknesses in one conversation, but this was not one of those times when he was comfortable with this ability.

"What's so funny?" He asked her impatiently, and she giggled in reply to his irritation,

"It's not doing a great job of keeping you away if an idiot like me managed to break in here anyway."

Anti-Cosmo almost spluttered out a snarl as he realised that she was technically right. He bent over his work in annoyance and grumbled with irritation as he didn't feel compelled to reply to her. Yet she was still laughing. She had a loud laugh, Anti-Cosmo thought, but it was so soft too. He could still hear her. And he wanted to hear her...

"It really is beautiful."

"What?" Anti-Cosmo yelled and suddenly shot up.

"The sun. It's pretty from up here." She said with a contented sigh.

Anti-Cosmo scoffed at his lack of self-control and leaned on his elbow, staring at his pencil for a moment as he realised how careless he was getting. His thoughts had wavered again, and that was beginning to bother him a lot.

"I don't think I've ever seen the Earth's sun before. It's real pretty to look at..." Her voice trailed off again and, for a moment, she was silent. Anti-Cosmo wondered why she had suddenly stopped mid-way through her sentence, and figured it was perhaps because she was finally starting to realise her situation at last. Perhaps she knew then that she was going to die, he thought. But he almost jumped out of his skin when she suddenly shouted in surprise, "Ahh, man, it hurts to stare at it though! Jeez!"

"Moron..." Anti-Cosmo mumbled as he shook his head. He was beginning to think that he was giving this woman too much credit. He found that she was clearly much too stupid to realise the true nature of the danger she was in.

"You should totally build a huge laser gun or something and blow up that nasty sun! That'd be pretty evil... um..." Again, she trailed off mid-way through her sentence, and that had started to annoy Anti-Cosmo.

"What?" He asked her impatiently.

"Y'know I never caught your name."

Anti-Cosmo sat back for a moment. His anger had simmered down when he contemplated this. He teetered on the idea of giving her his identity, and wondered if it would really amount to anything. But when he couldn't think of anything, he shook his head and he leaned over his work to immerse himself in it once again.

"It doesn't matter," he told her indifferently.

"Oh, sure it does! If you wanna be really evil, and I mean really _really_ evil, you should let your victims know the name of their oppressor... so that the sound of your name strikes fear into the hearts of their afterlives!"

Anti-Cosmo's eyes widened as he glanced over to the door, and he felt a little speechless.

"That... actually sounds pretty evil." Anti-Cosmo said truthfully. He wondered one final time if this would be a good idea, but once he figured that he was fairly impartial about the matter, he finally shrugged with somewhat of a smirk, "Alright, then the name of _your_ oppressor is Anti-Cosmo."

Suddenly, the voice gasped.

"Anti-Cosmo? You're _the _Anti-Cosmo?" She sounded surprisingly ecstatic all of a sudden, "You're a legend around here! Everyone is afraid of you, even the teachers don't want to get on the wrong side of you! That's _crazy_! I mean, no one's really seen much of you, since you're always cooped up here, but the rumours about you are downright terrifying!" Then her voice became dreamy as if she was in a state of awe, "Wow, I'm being murdered by Anti-Cosmo..."

Anti-Cosmo felt himself beaming with pride. He was intensely proud of his status, and he was more than happy to find that his reputation had preceded even his own expectations. He grinned as he glowered in egotistical self-respect.

"Well, at least you're not dumb enough to recognise greatness when you see it."

The sound of her laughter echoed through the room again, and Anti-Cosmo's smile immediately faded. He dove straight back into his work, and was determined to shut out that noise as quickly as possible.

"Hey, you wanna know my name?" She asked excitedly.

"No, I don't." He snapped at her sharply without looking away from his work, "I don't want to get to know anyone I've murdered. You're just another face in a long line of nameless victims."

"You've killed a lot of people then, huh?"

Anti-Cosmo blinked. For a moment, he didn't know how to answer that truthfully and still make it sound how he wanted it to sound. Yet when he thought of a way, he still found himself to be a little flustered.

"Well... yeah, I've killed, but... only inadvertently..."

"What'd you mean?" She asked innocently.

"To put it bluntly, I may or may not have killed people." Anti-Cosmo placed his pencil behind his ear as he leaned on his hand, peering up towards to a broken stained glass window in thought, "What I mean is, I cause a lot of bad luck on the planet, but who knows if it really had any unfortunate long term effects." He explained to her carefully, and realised he had to really simplify this in order for this woman to understand, "For example, if I break a mother's back but she doesn't have enough money to cover the medical bills, I'd have financially ruined her. She could starve from not having enough money to feed herself or her family. She could end her life in a number of ways, but everything stemmed from that one instance that I caused."

"I never thought of that before." She sounded as if she was in complete awe, and Anti-Cosmo almost smirked at this. Again, his inflated ego made him bask in his own pride. He continued to explain nonchalantly,

"I wrote a paper once on the theory that any interference we make on Earth is the start of an important event that sets off a series of chain reactions. Anything we do, no matter how small, will create a sequence of even bigger events that will either lead to something good or bad in the future. Every interference we make, every encounter with any living person could trigger something significant in time." Anti-Cosmo shrugged as if this was all no big deal, "It's called the domino theory. And it applies to us anti-fairies as much as it does to the human race..."

And then, Anti-Cosmo contemplated for a moment on the significance on his encounter with this mysterious woman...

"Oh, I see." She sounded impressed before continuing the interrogation, "But you've never straight up killed someone before?"

Anti-Cosmo scowled. He didn't feel compelled to give her a straight answer, or feel compelled to give her a definite answer to that question at all, and finally snapped back at her,

"I'm killing you right now, aren't I?"

"So am I your first?" She asked him in shock.

Anti-Cosmo's face suddenly burnt up. He scratched the back of his head awkwardly as his thoughts wandered to the dark corners of his mind, and his face became completely flushed over into a deep shade of red. Suddenly, giving a straight answer was the least of his worries.

"Please don't put it like that..." He lightly scolded her as he resisted his own bashful nature.

"This is so cool. I'm Anti-Cosmo's first definite victim! Wait until I tell everyone..." She quickly stopped in her tracks as if she had to think over what she had just said, "Actually no, that'd be pretty difficult to do... since I'll be dead."

Despite himself, Anti-Cosmo let out a small laugh with an eyebrow raised. His mood had begun to lighten up finally, even after all that's happened, and his curiosity about her heightened once again. He paused for a moment as he let his mind soundlessly wander, until finally felt the need to comment on something that had plagued him about her all this time.

"You're pretty optimistic for someone about to face their own death."

He was graced with another burst of laughter that bounced off the walls. Anti-Cosmo wasn't even sure if that was meant to be funny at all, though the way he commented was pretty snarky, he felt that with someone this simple-minded, he had to be more direct and clear about what he wanted to know. So, he turned towards the door, and asked her directly,

"How are you able to do that?"

"Hm?" She asked once her laughter finally died down.

"How can you smile in the face of death like this?" Anti-Cosmo suddenly furrowed his eyebrows as he became incredibly suspicious of her, "Do you know something I don't?"

"Um, no. I'm pretty certain in a few days I'll be dead as dust." She said cheerfully. Then, even more unpredictably, her voice suddenly became very low-key and even a little sorrowful, "You know, um, if you let me live, I promise I'll make it up to you."

Anti-Cosmo was silent for a moment. He had certainly noticed how quickly she changed her tune, and was actually thrown off for a moment after becoming used to how cheerful she was. Perhaps, he wondered, she wasn't as easygoing as she appeared to be.

Then he grimaced as he also wondered if she really wasn't too stupid to recognise the situation she was in. He stood firm, placing a hand on his hip and told her sharply,

"I wouldn't try bargaining with me, you know. I really don't think you'll be able to give me anything of use to me."

She paused, and Anti-Cosmo didn't know how to interpret this. Was she really going to bargain with him, he wondered, or was she going to beg for her life? Then his suspicions came to a crashing halt as her voice sounded suddenly hoarse and incredibly pained, as if she was fighting back the tears,

"I'm really sorry for what I did. If killing me will condone for what I've done to you, then you should get it over and done with already."

Anti-Cosmo was stunned into silence. His eyes grew wide, realising the true nature of this woman's intentions, and felt as if he could barely speak. When he could finally manage to find his voice in his throat, he sounded almost breathless.

"You'd rather have my forgiveness than your own life?" He asked incredulously, and his voice became almost as uneasy as hers, "I'm letting you die, how can you still want my forgiveness?"

The woman took a moment to herself to sniff, and to even laugh bitterly at what he said, before finally replying morosely, and incredibly sincerely,

"I guess that's just how it is..."

"It doesn't have to be!" Anti-Cosmo squared himself towards the door, and anxiously ran his hand through his messy hair in total disbelief, "How can you be so careless with your life?!"

She paused again, and Anti-Cosmo felt too agitated to be patient with her, yet he couldn't find the right words to say. He didn't know what the proper reaction to this was. He only stood there, staring wide eyed at the door as if he hoped some kind of answer to spring forth from it.

"I've made my peace with death." She said as her voice sounded sombre, but still genuine, and finally she failed to stifle a sob as she choked out the truth, "I just... I don't want to die feeling like a failure."

For a while, Anti-Cosmo was left staring at the door in complete stillness. The woman's soft sobbing filled the room, and he found that it was much less pleasant than when it was filled with her laughter. In fact, he realised that he couldn't stand this at all.

But, he couldn't find the right words to say at all. He couldn't quite believe what this woman was telling him, but it also seemed to make perfect sense to him. He had hoped this wouldn't happen, as he knew nothing good would come out of getting to know even a little bit about this woman, but she was so peculiar, so infectiously charming, and such a sympathetic character that Anti-Cosmo had almost forgotten that he was the most feared student at this academy. He forgot that he was fearful for a reason, he forgotten that he thrived on the sadness and misfortune of others...

But this girl was completely different.

He tried to figure out just why someone would value someone's forgiveness over their own life. It absolutely boggled his mind that this woman would willingly throw away her existence to appease someone she had wronged in her life.

_I'm a stranger to her... so why is she so hung up on a stranger's anger? It's too pitiful... too heartbreaking..._

Anti-Cosmo's eyes softened for a moment. His cold heart had wavered, but he didn't care. Because he finally realised why this has managed to touch him so deeply.

He related to her. Anti-Cosmo didn't want to admit it, but one of his biggest fears in this life was the fear of failure. Everyone had weaknesses, he knew that, and he couldn't escape his own. He dreamed of power, he dreamed of success, so it was only natural that his biggest downfall would be the complete opposite. And this made him wonder, if he was in the exact same position as this woman, would he trade his own life to ensure that he didn't feel like a complete failure?

And as he heard the quiet desperate cries of a woman who felt exactly that, he felt as if he was standing beside himself. The woman out there on the balcony was him, his own fear of incompetence and disappointment that had been locked away. And how ironic, he found, that he refused to let her out...

Anti-Cosmo picked up his wand and soundlessly made it glow. As he did this, he found it strange that he met someone he could relate to without knowing their name, or much else outside of that. He knew she was an idiot, he knew she was generally a carefree person, which was the exact opposite of him in every way, and yet he shared her insecurity. Granted that he was a lot better at hiding it than her, but he wondered, would he really hide it so well if he was on the brink of death?

Anti-Cosmo's eyes became vacant, and for a moment, he wondered what the true nature of this woman really was... and wondered if there was a whole lot more to her than she lets on...

_Maybe... we're alike in more ways than I originally thought._

The voice suddenly gasped on the other side of the door. Anti-Cosmo figured that she finally noticed the sandwich that he made magically appear for her. And she sniffed before nervously speaking up again.

"Wh-what is this?"

"It's a sandwich." Anti-Cosmo told her bluntly, "With ham, cheese, lettuce and tomato, if I remember correctly."

She was silent for a moment, and Anti-Cosmo presumed that she was busy eating it by now. However when he heard no sound at all, he began to wonder what she was up to. What was she doing, he generally wondered, what was she thinking?

"...is there poison on here too?" She asked him hesitantly.

"No, there isn't." He smirked as a fairly unpleasant thought came to him, "But if you'd prefer it, I can add some on for you."

"I'm good, thanks." She said anxiously, "I'm sure poison tastes _terrible_."

At that point, Anti-Cosmo could hear her suddenly attacking the sandwich, and sounds of enjoyment finally filled the air. The atmosphere eased up, and Anti-Cosmo was surprisingly grateful for this. Though he didn't expect her to be such a glutton with food by the sound of how ungraceful she was, but Anti-Cosmo was always indifferent about the grace of others. He was far too concerned with his own to care.

When she finally finished the sandwich, everything grew silent once more. As the seconds went on and the more the silence lasted, the more Anti-Cosmo figured that she knew why he gave her the sandwich.

Anti-Cosmo knew now that she wasn't as stupid as she seemed to be. She knew she was going to die, she just didn't object to it. So she must've known that in that giving her that sandwich, that was his single significant decision; he had decided to save her life. She must've known that one event had prevented, or at least prolonged, a more significant event of the future. The domino effect had occurred.

He decided that he wasn't going to let her die. In that instance, Anti-Cosmo realised the value of her life, even when she didn't value it at all, by relating to that life. So he chose to preserve it. All because he gave her a sandwich. And from her silence, he knew that she must've known this too.

A small thud sounded as she rested her shoulder against the door, and although her voice was low and sombre, it was still clear enough to let Anti-Cosmo know that she lay her head against the metal,

"I will make it up to you, y'know."

Anti-Cosmo finally gave in to her, and listened.

"How are you going to do that?" He asked, his voice was also low and solemn.

"Well, um, if movies have taught me anything, it's that most bad guys want money."

Anti-Cosmo almost snorted with dark laughter.

"Not this bad guy," he told her with an unpredictable grin, "I've absolutely no interest in material wealth, that's not what I want out of world domination. You've simply been watching too many movies."

She moved around against the door as she seemed to perk up a little more,

"So what do you want out of it?"

"Power." He stated without an ounce of hesitation, and the more he spoke about it, the more energetic and passionate he became, "I want the ability to render the entire world to their knees and call me their ruler. I want people to fear me, to be too afraid to rebel against me, I want absolute supremacy over a society that strives on destruction and anarchy!" After this, he grinned and told her nonchalantly, "If you give me that right now, I'll finally forgive you and let you in."

"I'll... have to work on that." She hesitated as she almost sounded a little in awe about what he was talking about, but a little overwhelmed by this as well. Then she sounded incredibly perked up as she proposed an idea to him, "But if you want complete control of people, I'll agree to be your underling. I'll do all your work, make you lunch, run your errands..."

"I don't think so." Anti-Cosmo told her sternly with a roll of his eyes, "You don't seem like the kind of person that would do a good job of any of that."

"Sure I will! I'll do anything you ask of me." She sounded determined to assure him of that fact, "All you gotta do is snap your fingers and I'll come running. I'll do anything and I'll do it well, you'll see!"

"You'll do anything I say?" Anti-Cosmo asked her with an eyebrow raised, and almost scoffed at the whole concept, "You really do have no regard for your own life. Then again, that might be a useful trait in a subordinate."

Anti-Cosmo began to contemplate the potential beginning of his personal army. He knew he'd been meaning to start one for a while and start his eventual climb up into power. First, he needed a group of subordinates that would do his evil bidding, and naturally he had to hook on to anyone willing to do what he told them to do. Usually, anyone who isn't smart enough to realise they'd be manipulated by him would be the first candidates, and this girl seemed to fit the bill pretty well.

So, he finally came to his conclusion.

"Tell you what, if you agree to do everything I tell you to do from now on, I'll forget everything you've done and open the door." Anti-Cosmo told her firmly, "And I don't want to hear any complaints when I do. Remember that you're the one that suggested it."

She made a lot of uncomfortable movement behind the door as she suddenly hesitated and sounded unsure of herself,

"I know, but, um, this is starting to sound like one of those really dangerous deals, like selling your soul to the devil..."

Anti-Cosmo couldn't help but laugh out loud at how ridiculously childish that sounded, and smirked as he beamed with egotistical self-respect once again,

"That's funny, though I'm sure the devil is a lovely bloke compared to me."

"That wasn't meant to be funny." She said in confusion. Then she sounded all the more nervous about this as she stammered with anxiety, "I... don't know if I want to give you my soul, anyway. I... I have a boyfriend."

"Relax, I'm not interested in anything like that," Anti-Cosmo assured her and remained firm about the matter at hand, although his face did fill up with light tinges of colour, "I'm not going to try anything funny. I only intend to order you around while you do all of the dirty work. I'll deal with the technicalities and master planning."

She still sounded uneasy as she moved around a little more, and her voice even sounded a little flustered.

"I still don't like how you worded that..."

"Oh for Christ's sake, I'm not trying to hit on you!" Anti-Cosmo snapped at her impatiently despite his ears burning up in a bright shade of red, "I assure you that this master and servant arrangement is going to be strictly professional."

"You promise?" She asked him anxiously.

Anti-Cosmo rolled his eyes in exasperation and placed an exhausted hand over his face.

"I do." He finally told her.

"You do what?"

Anti-Cosmo groaned irritably, finding himself having no patience for this kind of childishness, and suddenly yelled sharply at her with a slightly red face,

"I promise I won't bloody try it on with you! Alright?!"

"Good." She sounded happy with that. And soon she moved herself back away from the door as she cheerfully called over to him. "Then you can have my soul, Anti-Devil."

"Charming." He said sarcastically as he couldn't quite decide whether or not he should be amused or irritated, "I can already tell this relationship is going to be an exhausting one."

Then, Anti-Cosmo took hold on the handle of the metal door, and slowly pushed it forward, and opened up the door to step into a sudden burst of natural light. For a moment, the sun had blinded his sight until he could place his hand over his eyes. And as soon as he could see through the shade, and as his vision finally returned...

Everything stopped.

Anti-Cosmo took a very sharp intake of breath.

The sun was just setting behind the sea of red and black storm clouds circling the tower beneath them, and the orange tinged universe above them was speckled with sparkling lights that the milky way produced. Everything was soft, everything was silent, everything was just insignificant surrounding the figure of this woman standing before him.

_How... have I never seen her before in my life?_

He couldn't move, he couldn't feel a thing. He became immersed in her figure that had been glowing from the soft rays of light gently touching over her blue skin. She bashfully looked to the side for a moment to tuck a few strands of her blue curly hair behind her ear, and her smile widened into a toothy grin over her misshapen teeth. Her smile had that childish innocence that seemed to compliment her personality perfectly.

And as she bravely met up with his gaze, it was as if a dagger shot through his chest.

He had never seen an anti-fairy without red eyes before this moment. And when he saw hers, he couldn't begin to describe how beautifully unique they were. They were a piercing shade of pink, reflecting all the warm colours that the sunset created. And that's simply what her eyes were. They were warm. As she smiled, her eyes lit up in a blaze of warmth.

_The fire..._

It burnt his heart, and he grabbed for his chest. He had to check if he was still breathing. His heartbeat was completely erratic. He couldn't tell if it had stopped dead or if it was beating so hard that it would break out of his chest at any minute. He couldn't tell. Anti-Cosmo pressed his lips together, and desperately suppressed his heartbeat as he gripped at his chest in a tighter hold.

Meanwhile, she brought her hand over her chest as she breathed out a sigh of relief, and smiled sweetly as she told him very softly,

"Thanks for rescuing me..."

"I, uh..." Anti-Cosmo could barely manage words.

Everything about this woman had changed for him. He never suspected this woman to be, well, a _woman_. Throughout this whole ordeal, she was simply another victim of his. She was another faceless anomaly in the crowd, until she had managed to build up an identity that he could recognise. And once he could put a face to this identity... he had no idea...

She cautiously stepped towards him, retaining that innocent toothy smile as she approached him, and he stiffened on the spot.

"And I'm sorry for all the trouble I've caused you." She said to him gently until she was standing right in front of him, "I'll make it up to you right now."

Anti-Cosmo couldn't even register her intentions, as he was so focused on her closeness to him. Then, it was as if a shock of lightning ran through him as he felt her fingers brush over his. Anti-Cosmo flinched, and watched as she curled her fingers over his hand, and brought it up towards her.

Anti-Cosmo felt as if his mouth had run dry, and all his blood ran to his head as his face lit up into a very bright blush.

"What... are you doing?" He asked her anxiously.

"According to Plato, the soul is in the form of three parts."

Suddenly, she guided his hand to the top of her hair, and gently placed his fingers across of her forehead, "First, the head, for reason," and as quickly as she had taken his hand, she guided his hand from the top of her head towards her chest, and pressed his hand against the base of her collarbone, "then, the heart, for emotion," then finally, she took his hand and traced it down her torso until she gently laid his hand against her stomach, "and, lastly, to the stomach... for desire."

Anti-Cosmo face burnt into an incredibly deep shade of red.

"There." She concluded cheerfully as she let go of his hand. He pulled it back quickly to inspect it, but nothing out of the ordinary had changed, "My soul is in your hands now."

Anti-Cosmo didn't know what to make of this. He knew that he should have found this very childish, he knew that he wouldn't have usually let this sort of thing go on for as long as it did, but he couldn't bring himself to stop her at any point. He'd gone beyond curiosity, and instead he'd found himself captivated by her. She had such a unique way of thinking, an incredibly bizarre array of perspectives... and he could only find it fascinating. She was an amazingly interesting person.

And, just as he thought he couldn't be in awe of her more than he already was, he asked her in surprise,

"Wait a second." He stopped her, "You've studied Plato?"

"Well, I haven't studied him as much as I have visited him in Greece." She told him simply and seemed to shrug it off as if meeting one of the world's most famous philosophers wasn't at all a big deal, "He was a nicer guy than his friend Aristotle, I don't think he cared much for me and my gender though..."

Anti-Cosmo was stunned. He never thought she would be the type of person to personally meet with ancient Greece's most well known philosophers, but at the same time, he wouldn't at all put it past her at this point. He struggled to find the strength to speak as he queried about her all the more,

"You're... serious?"

"Of course!" She laughed nonchalantly, "I may be stupid, but at least I'm well travelled."

Despite himself, Anti-Cosmo grinned at this. Then he shook his head in somewhat of a state of disbelief, and smirked as he replied,

"It seems that way." Then he looked over her shoulder and pointed over to the ledge of the balcony, "You do know you could have just flown off of there, right?"

She stared at it for a moment, widening her eyes as she realised this very... _very_ major mistake.

"Oh, yeah... I could've..." She said quietly as she scratched the back of her head, then she looked up at him with the most dumb-founded expression that Anti-Cosmo had ever seen, "Huh, guess I am pretty stupid..."

For a moment, Anti-Cosmo tried desperately to stifle his laughter, but he couldn't withhold it for much longer. She was almost taken aback when Anti-Cosmo burst into a loud and hearty laughter, and yet she didn't find it hard to stay straight faced alongside him. Soon, they were both a mess of mad laughter, simultaneously thinking about how ridiculous it was that this entire situation could have been avoided if she had noticed the ledge a lot sooner. Anti-Cosmo seemed to have doubled over, grabbing at his sides as his rib cage genuinely started to become painful, while she leant desperately on to the open door for support as she tried to catch her breath back.

Once Anti-Cosmo's laughter started to die down, he wiped away a few escaped tears and looked over to this mysterious woman. She leant back against the door and took a few deep breaths, then smiled to him as she crossed her arms over her stomach to withhold anymore laughter bubbling within her. Anti-Cosmo shook his head at her with a grin, noticing how guilty she looked despite her bright smile, and said with a sigh,

"You're a curious one... um..."

Her smile widened into a very large toothy grin.

"_Now_ do you wanna know my name?"

Anti-Cosmo laughed under his breath at the irony of it all, and finally gave into her.

"I guess it would make things easier if I knew what to call you," Anti-Cosmo said simply before his grin turned very mischievous, "Although I reserve the right to lock you back out here whenever you disobey me. Just because I know your name, doesn't mean I'll ever be easy on you. There's still a possibility of becoming one of my victims."

Despite how threatening he attempted to be, the woman's smile still remained as if she didn't find it at all convincing. And then, she shrugged and caught on to his playful mood,

"Whatever." She dismissed him innocently before sticking her tongue out at him, "At least I'll still be your first."

Anti-Cosmo surprisingly found that he much more amused by this than angry, which was a massive change from the atmosphere they shared earlier. Though, he still raised an eyebrow at her and flashed his sharp fangs at her into an intimidating grin,

"Hurry up and tell me your name before I call you something unflattering instead."

Again, she was completely unfazed by his empty threats and found herself only to smile in return. Anti-Cosmo wasn't sure if he'd ever get used to that, but for now he solely wondered why her toothy smile was so fascinating to him. Then, he flinched once again as she rose from against the door and stepped closer towards him, placing her hands over her arms as she gazed gently towards him,

"I'm Anti-Wanda." She told him softly with a slight tilt of her head, "Your personal servant from here on in."

Anti-Cosmo swallowed a hard gulp. Her smile was warm, he found. And so were her eyes. They were so interesting, as if she'd captured the sun in her eyes and it blazed in a fiery pink inferno...

_Anti-Wanda..._

Quickly, Anti-Cosmo turned away from her as his face filled up with colour once again, and he refused to acknowledge how much he perspired under her gaze.

"Well, Anti-Wanda," Anti-Cosmo coughed into his hand to clear his dry throat, "first order of business is..."

She suddenly winced and ducked for cover under her arms at all the sadistic ideas that she could ever think to do for him, and held her breath as she anticipated the worst one of them all to be her very first task...

"Put the kettle on. I still need that cup of tea from earlier. If I'm going to get any work done today, I'll need my daily intake."

Anti-Wanda hesitantly looked back over to him as she let her guard down, and was incredibly surprised by how merciful he was being with her. However, she didn't dwell on how she got so lucky this time, and regained her balance on both feet,

"Oh, right." She breathed as she still felt a little flustered, then as quickly as it went, her bright smile returned once again, "Alright, no problem!"

Anti-Wanda turned on her heels and finally ran past Anti-Cosmo and into the safety of the building. He watched her run inside and noticed how energetic of a person she was. However, once she was inside, she stopped all of a sudden and froze in place as if her entire figure stiffened on the spot.

"What is it?" Anti-Cosmo asked curiously with a skeptical eyebrow raised. She quickly turned over her shoulder to him and squeezed her legs together, and bounced uncomfortably on the spot.

"Um, permission to take a quick bathroom break?" She cried. Anti-Cosmo looked at her in complete surprise. She must have interpreted his surprise with total disgust as her entire face filled up with colour and turned completely red with embarrassment, "What? I was locked out there for a long time!"

"Just... do what you need to do." He told her passively. Anti-Wanda quickly shot him a grateful smile as she shot out the room.

"Thanks!" She called back to him as she disappeared from his sight.

As Anti-Wanda ran out the room, Anti-Cosmo was left thinking about how utterly eccentric she was. He hesitated in the doorway of the balcony, leaned against the door frame and crossed his arms, letting his gaze turn over to the setting sun in the distance. He'd never really looked at the Earth's sun at this angle, shining brightly over the bleakly coloured storm clouds, and Anti-Wanda was right.

_It really is beautiful._

How strange, he felt, that after meeting her his entire perspective from his studio seemed to be completely changed. At the time, he had no idea why...

Then he began wondering if this arrangement would truly be a beneficial in the end. He was desperate for time now that his project had been torn apart, and he admitted that the added help would be a huge advantage in it's completion, though he wondered if she could provide the help that he really needed. She was dumb, she was cheerful, she was the opposite of all of his traits, so what could she possibly do to help him in the long run?

Then he wondered if she would become too much of a distraction. If he didn't keep her at arm's length, she would become a problem at some point. Then again, he thought, would he let her become a distraction so easily? She was an interesting character, and he was guilty in wanting to know more about her, so he would inevitably end up paying more attention to her. In this short time that he's known her, he found her to have so many fascinating features.

He thought back to how he found her on the balcony. She was leaning against the ledge with the sun lighting up the whole of her blue figure, she was holding on to her curly blue hair as she nervously laced her fingers through it... she was smiling so largely as her full lips curled over her misshapen teeth... and her eyes were ablaze as if there were pink flames in her scorching gaze...

_The fire in her eyes..._

Anti-Cosmo ran a frustrated hand through his hair as he sighed. This was definitely not a good idea.

…

The next morning, Anti-Cosmo arrived on time to his morning meeting with his personal tutor, Anti-Guy Moon, and didn't hesitate to enter his office without knocking first. He had a policy that anyone had to be prepared for his arrival, regardless of how busy they were, and he was especially strict with this policy if it was someone else arranging the meeting with him.

Anti-Cosmo walked through the door and found his tutor idly clicking through his emails on his computer, and he glanced over to his side once he saw Anti-Cosmo in the corner of his eyes. Anti-Cosmo knew that he was a peculiar teacher, who had a very intense perspective on the success of the academy he worked at. Ironically, Anti-Cosmo wasn't sure if Anti-Guy's overwhelming pride for his job was healthy for him.

Regardless, Anti-Cosmo aimed to do his best to meet up with his expectations and deadlines, and usually he would do a good job of it. However, they had clashed once or twice over who had the bigger ego.

"You wanted to see me, Anti-Guy?" Anti-Cosmo asked him as he hovered on the other side of his desk.

"Oh, right, I did!" He suddenly shot up from his computer and faced all of his attention on Anti-Cosmo, with intensely wide eyes, "First of all, I wanted to congratulate you on your continuing success at the academy. We're keen to see more of your intriguing artistry brought to the table, Anti-Cosmo. We have high hopes for your next submission this coming Friday the 13th. I'm sure it'll be something absolutely spectacular, as we normally expect from you."

"I'll do my best, sir." Anti-Cosmo plainly said. He recognised that while he was attending the academy, he had to be as level-headed as possible regarding the people who handled his chances of graduating.

"Now to get to the matter at hand." Anti-Guy pressed his hands together as his tone of voice became more serious, "As you know, the faculty continuously tries to promote brilliance and strive for perfection from this academy's student body, and I expect our students to look to you for direction and guidance. I would hope that some of our more, uh,_ difficult_ students look upon you as their role model, as a symbol of what our academy can achieve if they actually choose to take our education seriously!"

Anti-Guy sat back as his sudden burst of irritation simmered down, as he was the kind of person who would sound humble one minute, then angrily passionate the next. He didn't have the time for anyone who didn't see what he saw in the educational system, and so he would often come across as intensely condescending towards anyone who couldn't see it his way, "Anti-Cosmo, what I'm trying to say is, you're the ideal candidate for a new program I've proposed to help lesser fortunate students realise the _privilege_ they've been given here at this academy."

"You can't be serious..." Anti-Cosmo was becoming more than agitated by what he was implying.

"I acknowledge that you do value your solitude, and I'm happy that it aids you and your practises in that studio we've so _generously_ lent to you." His lips curled up into a sly smile, "However, we also promote a student's maturity during this intense training facility. And, let's face it, you're going to need social skills to be able to function in this world. So, we've set you up with a struggling student who will accompany you in your private studio."

"But, sir... if I may-"

"Anti-Cosmo, please understand that this will be an _enlightening_ experience for you and this student." He interrupted before Anti-Cosmo could get a defensive word in edgewise, "You'll have the chance to grow as a person, as well as pass on some of your knowledge to a poor soul who so desperately needs it." He then squared his gaze directly at Anti-Cosmo, "After all, we're all well aware of your fine leadership skills. You've been given the role as an educator, the _highest_ ranking position that this academy as to offer. Think of this as a positive career move. It's another step closer to reaching your goal, is it not?"

Anti-Cosmo knew he was generally being manipulated into this, and he knew that he was intending to butter him up to the idea, however he knew he also had a point. Anti-Cosmo was hoping to create that personal army he'd always dreamed of, and with more idiots on his side, he'll only be that much closer to his goal. However, he wasn't all that keen on sharing his private space with someone else. He was right, he valued his time alone to work in solitude, but he wasn't entirely in a position where he could balance his projects due in a few weeks time as well as teach another student on the side. He knew he was a genius, but he wasn't immune to stress.

"I still don't know about this..."

"Okay then. Let me be blunt, Anti-Cosmo." He suddenly said as he rose from his desk, gazing directly at Anti-Cosmo as his voice grew extremely dark, "If you fail to cooperate in this program, we're simply going to have to give that private studio to someone who _will _cooperate." He lifted his head as if he were looking down his nose at him, "Do you see what I'm saying?"

"...I do, sir." Anti-Cosmo replied with equal amount of intimidation in his voice as he clenched his fists by his sides to restrain his anger, "Though I didn't think blackmail was your style."

"You're a smart kid, Anti-Cosmo. I wish you'd wise up and realise who ultimately has the authority around here." He told him harshly before he sat back down with a less than innocent smile on his face, "Besides, you still get to keep your _benefits_. So, what's the harm in a little company?"

Anti-Cosmo bit his tongue to prevent himself from giving into his rising anger. He always figured that Anti-Guy was threatened by his knowledge and power, and he'd no doubt take advantage of every opportunity to bring Anti-Cosmo down to size.

However, just before the tension between them could become any more thick, the door behind Anti-Cosmo clicked open.

"Ah, you've finally arrived." Anti-Guy suddenly called as his voice was loud and welcoming, and he quickly changed his tune from aggressive to incredibly friendly. However, his underlining patronising manner was still apparent, at least to Anti-Cosmo, "Fashionably late, as per usual, but no matter! We're all friends here, right?"

Anti-Cosmo turned over his shoulder to see who it was, and his eyes widened as he couldn't quite believe who he saw standing there with messy curled blue hair and wide sparkling pink eyes.

"Sorry I'm late," Anti-Wanda said quickly as if she were out of breath, and shut the door behind her as she approached Anti-Guy's desk with a bright and cheerful smile, "The cafeteria had a breakfast special on pizza!"

Anti-Cosmo couldn't withhold his utter surprise of seeing her there so suddenly,

"Anti-Wanda?!"

"Anti-Cosmo!" Suddenly she turned on her heel and met up with Anti-Cosmo's equally surprised gaze.

"Well this certainly makes introductions and first impressions less awkward." Anti-Guy chimed in with a sly smile, "So you know each other?"

"Yeah, we do!" Anti-Wanda turned back to him with an easygoing demeanor while Anti-Cosmo sighed with exhaustion,

"Not for very long, mind you..."

"That doesn't matter," Anti-Guy continued to smile just as innocently as Anti-Wanda had, "since you'll be spending a lot more time closely getting to know each other from this point on."

Anti-Cosmo had to bite his tongue once again to prevent a sharp gasp. He felt as if his eyes couldn't grow any wider than they already were, but as he stared longer at Anti-Guy's deviously cheerful smile, he was almost too afraid to even ask,

"Sir... what are you telling me?"

"Isn't it obvious, Anti-Cosmo?" Anti-Guy called to him and swung his arms out as if he was personally enjoying torturing him, "Anti-Wanda will be your new student!"

Anti-Cosmo breathed unenthusiastically, and his shoulders fell in defeat as he mumbled under his breath,

"I was afraid of that..."

"What? Are you serious?" Anti-Wanda, however, was more than surprised about this as she hadn't expected this to be what Anti-Guy had meant at all, "Anti-Cosmo is going to be my new teacher?"

"Yes, Anti-Wanda!" He nodded to her as if she were a small child, then as he continued to smile towards her, but the tone of his voice made it sound as if he was directly referring to Anti-Cosmo instead, "And I should emphasise that although he'll be your teacher throughout this experience, I want you to understand that ultimately you'll be in charge of this arrangement. We want you to get the full experience of the education we provide here at the academy! And if you're unsatisfied with the quality of Anti-Cosmo's practises or methods, then do not hesitate to inform us about them. We'll be happy to put an end to this program and an end to Anti-Cosmo's diploma." He sat back in his chair and his insidious grin widened, "After all, we _care _about your education."

Anti-Wanda turned over her shoulder to Anti-Cosmo, and her eyes were wide with limitless surprise.

"Oh! I guess this makes our arrangement a whole lot more awkward."

"Fate must be having a laugh..." Anti-Cosmo said quietly as he rubbed his hand over his face with total fatigue.

"Come on, Anti-Cosmo, think positively! You're Anti-Fairy Academy's best and brightest student!" Anti-Guy brought his hands together on his lap and crossed his leg over the other as his eyebrows raised. Then his crooked grin only became more deceitful as he told him firmly, "After all this is over, I'm sure you'll have a better understanding of your position in this academy and in this society. Wouldn't you agree?"

"I'm starting to realise that, sir." Anti-Cosmo told him truthfully, desperately fighting the urge to reciprocate rather violently.

"Good." Anti-Guy bared his teeth as he pointed to the door, "Now get out of my office and seize the day. It's a beautiful day for learning!"

"I'll seize it so _fervently_, sir." Anti-Cosmo told him sarcastically as he feigned a smile. Then as he walked out the room with Anti-Wanda right beside him, and as he closed the door behind them both, his intimidating scowl took over his entire expression. "I'll seize my hands around your _god damn_ throat, sir..."

Anti-Cosmo immediately walked down the hallway, and Anti-Wanda had to quickly step up to him to meet up with his fast steps. The corridor was long and empty, the arched ceilings made their steps echo almost louder than their voices and Anti-Wanda tried her best to keep up with his fast pace. He was faster than usual, mainly because of his infuriated state, but Anti-Wanda was completely oblivious to this despite how he gritted his teeth in anger.

"Isn't that funny, Anti-Cosmo?" Anti-Wanda said with an innocent smile, "You're going to be my teacher!"

"It's bloody hysterical." He said with total disdain.

"Hey, don't look so gloomy. It's not all bad, this means I'll be around all the time to wait on you hand and foot." She brought her hands together behind her back as she gazed along the intricately decorated stone walls, and finally dared to tease Anti-Cosmo with a mischievous grin, "Although the way Anti-Guy put it made it sound like you have to be doing everything I say from now on. That's quite a turn around, wouldn't you say Anti-Cosmo?"

Suddenly, Anti-Cosmo couldn't take much more of this.

He quickly moved around on his feet as he reached out and grabbed for Anti-Wanda's arm. She shouted out in utter surprise as he fiercely pinned her arm against the stone wall and swiftly pushed her back against it. She was forced to look up at him and found he was glaring down at her with fiery anger in his eyes. He'd trapped her against the wall by his arms that had created a cage around her. She couldn't run, she couldn't move. Her eyes were locked on to his. So Anti-Wanda breathed sharply, completely shocked by how aggressive he'd become, and finally realised that she had pushed his buttons at the wrong time.

Anti-Cosmo stared at her as if flames were erupting from his eyes, and he almost let out a growl past his sharp fangs,

"Look, I want you to forget everything that asshole said about how you're in charge of me!" He seethed as if he were shooting daggers directly from his eyes, and he was determined to prioritize where she stood with him, "You're not in charge. I certainly don't work that way. And need I remind you whose idea it was to make this arrangement in the first place? You owe me!"

"Alright, alright!" Anti-Wanda persisted as she turned her head away from him, and pouted by how unfair she felt he was being, "Man, I was just playing! I said I was gonna wait on you! There's no need to get so close and personal."

Suddenly, Anti-Cosmo realised what he was doing.

He had his hand firmly gripped around Anti-Wanda's wrist, pinning her down against her will. He had pushed her back up against the stone wall with her face only inches away from his. Anti-Wanda had turned her piercing pink eyes away from him, and he'd noticed the faint tinge of a blush washing over her face. The blue strands of his hair had tangled against her curls. And he could feel her sharp breath on his forearms that caged her on either side of her head. Their figures were very dangerously close to one another.

Anti-Cosmo loosened his grip and his hands fell back down to his sides. Then he awkwardly stepped back with his lips tightly pressed together. He turned away from her, as she had still turned away from him, and they stood in silence for a moment. Anti-Wanda grabbed at her arm that he'd pinned against the wall as she gazed vacantly away from him, and he clenched his fists by his sides as he perspired in a flustered state. The air was insanely hot between them.

However, Anti-Cosmo sighed when he finally crossed his arms as his short temper reminded him of the matter at hand.

"I'm only reiterating what we agreed on yesterday." He told her impatiently, still without making eye contact with her, "I don't intend to go back on my word, so I hope you'll show me the same courtesy."

"Of course I will. I still feel terrible about what happened." She said quietly as she recalled the mess she'd inadvertently made. Finally, she captured his gaze again and looked to him with apologetic sorrow in her burning eyes. Once she caught his gaze, he was locked on her, and hadn't felt compelled at all to look away. Then she rubbed her arm nervously as she sounded genuinely upset, "Look, Anti-Cosmo, I really do want to make it up to you, and I'm going to show you that it's what I intend to do. Let me prove to you that I will go through with my promise. Please," she looked away from him for a moment and told him dejectedly, "I want to redeem myself to you... and to me."

Anti-Cosmo felt it again.

He felt himself slipping and giving into his sympathy the more he looked at her disheartened expression. He winced as her eyes became watery, as if she were on the verge of tears, and Anti-Cosmo sighed deeply. He knew that he couldn't let this go on any longer, as it was strangely agony for him as well to look at her the way she was.

"I'm still a little skeptical... but, I'm still willing to give you a chance." He told her truthfully as he rubbed the back of his head in thought. Then, as his wandering mind focused once more on her, he then he gave her a hard and intensely severe stare as he desperately attempted to attain his domineering persona, "I'm willing to look past all of this, so you better take advantage of it."

"Sure, no problem." She breathed a sigh of relief and smiled sweetly in reply.

Anti-Cosmo felt as if his face was heating up once again the more he looked at her smile. He quickly turned his head and covered his mouth with his hand as he cleared his throat,

"I... don't want your position over me to get to your head. I hope you realise where you really stand between us. You're my inferior and you'll do what I say." He firmly ordered her without meeting her gaze before his voice grew a little softer, "Nothing more."

"Alright, I get it. I'll make you tea, pick up the groceries, whatever you want." Anti-Wanda couldn't help but giggle over how much he was beginning to repeat himself over the matter.

As he finally returned his gaze back to her, he raised an eyebrow at how she was so easygoing despite everything he'd told her. He was sure that he was being as intimidating as he normally was, as he usually could have the most fearsome professors at this academy running for cover, but Anti-Wanda was so laid-back and cheerful. He admitted to himself once more, she was a mystery.

"I'm not sure I approve of you taking this whole situation so lightly." Anti-Cosmo smirked as he stepped closer to her and leaned over her in a domineering stance, "I should remind you again of who I am and what I'm capable of."

"Oh right, right. You did say you'd like people to fear you." Anti-Wanda remembered as she placed a contemplative finger to her lips, then her shoulders rose as she shot him a guilty smile and decided to be bluntly truthful to him, "Well, to be honest, the idea of being constantly terrified of you sounds a little exhausting. Can't I just cower in fear every once in a while and get it out of the way?"

Anti-Cosmo didn't respond. He simply looked at her with confounded awe, and wondered if he was simply off his game today. It seemed no matter what he did, he just couldn't seem to shake her up like he could with anyone else. She was an idiot, but she was immune to him. She was different.

"Besides, you don't _look _scary. Your face looks too normal, even with the monocle." Anti-Wanda observed with a tilt of her head and lightly brushed her fingers over the string leading up to his monocle. Anti-Cosmo flinched by her sudden action for a moment and was caught off guard by how she widely grinned over her crooked teeth. Then, she told him gently, "You're not going to scare anyone looking like that. You actually have a good-looking face."

Anti-Cosmo blinked at her. And for a moment, he didn't at all register what she had just told him. He knew he wasn't exactly a particularly vain person in looks, though he did try his best to look smart and professional, but he'd never considered the possibility of anyone commenting so lightly on his appearance. And when Anti-Wanda did it so gently, his entire head filled up into a deep shade of red as if smoke had erupted from his ears.

He quickly turned around as he attempted to calm his fast beating heart. He gripped his chest once again as he avoided her gaze, and coughed awkwardly as he tried to find his voice again.

"...let's just get back to the studio." He finally managed, though his voice was low and very clearly caused by his embarrassment.

As he continued to walk down the empty hallways, Anti-Wanda gladly joined his side and was grateful that his steps weren't as fast as they were before. She smiled as she could finally keep up with his pace, and turned over to him with an upbeat grin,

"You want me to make you some morning tea?"

"Sure," Anti-Cosmo peered over to her and looked at her suspiciously, "if you can promise not to ruin the studio this time."

"I won't, I won't, I promise!" She laughed out loud and Anti-Cosmo found himself grinning along with her, then she held up her fists in an enthusiastic bout of determination, "I'll make a cup of tea so good that the whole of England will be proud of me!"

Anti-Cosmo couldn't help it. He was finding himself completely immersed by her and her strange habits. Her sunny disposition was having a completely unexpected affect on him, and he found that he didn't seem to mind all that much. And as he smirked over to her mischievously, he felt compelled to scold her just as cheerfully,

"You bloody well better."

…

_Chapter One End  
_

...


	2. Right In Two

Chapter Two :: _Right In Two_

…

_Something is off. Something about today is very off…_

Anti-Cosmo sat motionlessly at his desk as he gave in to his deep thoughts. He held up his hands to his chin and clasped them together, almost as if in prayer, and his vacant eyes stared into the distance as he delved into the complexities of his mind. Over and over again, he tried to find the cause of the overwhelming discomfort that had overcome him. But no matter how hard he thought, Anti-Cosmo couldn't quite figure out what was so different about that morning.

There was something plaguing him in the back of his mind, and it itched to be recognised as each hour slowly passed him by. Maybe it was something airborne, he wondered, as he found the air to be hotter than normal. It was especially odd as the chilly winds had picked up through the broken cracks of his luminous stained glass windows, but the warm atmosphere remained prominent in spite of this, much to Anti-Cosmo's anxiety.

Then, just as he was sure that his train of thought had finally began to crack down on the answer, Anti-Cosmo was suddenly interrupted by a soft noise beside him, and his thoughts had halted altogether. A cup of tea had sat down on his desk beside him, and Anti-Cosmo's eyes snapped back to reality as he quickly recognised feminine elongated fingers had latched on to the rims of the mug. He took his time as his gaze followed the slender contours of her arm that led up to her shoulder that had dangerously lingered close to him, and Anti-Cosmo flinched slightly away in fear of sudden contact with her. And as he cautiously leant back on his stool, Anti-Cosmo's eyes met with the widened rose-coloured eyes of his new studio companion…

…and Anti-Cosmo could only stare back in hopeless awe of her.

"What? You think I'm incapable of making a cup of tea or something?" Anti-Wanda asked with mock annoyance, then waved at him dismissively, "Look, I know you think I'm hopeless, so let me prove to you that I have my uses. It might surprise you, but I can actually function like a normal adult. I mean, how hard is it to pour hot water into a cup with a teabag inside and add a bit of milk to it? Please! You underestimate my mad tea-making skills."

"Really? Making a cup of tea… you call that a skill?" Anti-Cosmo nonchalantly asked her as he finally relaxed to lean forward on his stool. He took a hold of his mug and gently picked it up to calmly bring it to his lips, and gently blew across the surface with grace and sophistication. Whereas Anti-Wanda slumped against the edge of his desk with her arms firmly folded in a brazen manner before replying,

"If you can do something well, then it's a skill. That's how I see it." Anti-Wanda shrugged.

"You might be right about that," Anti-Cosmo gruffly said as he winced suddenly when he took a sip of his tea, before he promptly placed it back on his desk. Then he glanced at Anti-Wanda with an unamused arched eyebrow, "Although, I wouldn't count on this tea-making lark to be one of your defining skills… since this batch you made is a complete failure."

"What?" Anti-Wanda's face suddenly fell as she looked desperately towards the mug. Quickly, she grabbed the mug between her palms and slid it towards her to take a better look at it. Her mouth hung open, agape with confusion, before her flustered gaze returned to Anti-Cosmo, "It can't be! I-I mean, I don't understand… I did everything as per your instructions!"

Anti-Cosmo leant his elbow on his desk and he relaxed his head against his hand, and continued to stare unamused at her while she fretted over the contents of the mug. For the life of her, she couldn't find anything wrong with it. And as Anti-Cosmo began to realise that she wouldn't catch on to her own mistake, he almost monotonously asked her,

"Be honest with me now, Anti-Wanda, just how much sugar did you put inside it?"

Anti-Wanda's head snapped up as she blinked in bewilderment at him for a few moments, before she pursed her lips to the side in wonder. She thought long and hard, as if recalling the last five minutes was like a magnificent strain on her memory, and then as her eyes squinted with determination to mentally retrace her steps, she finally replied with confidence,

"I put the exact amount of sugar you asked for. I remember that for sure!"

Anti-Cosmo's eyebrows raised as he was doubtful about that.

"Two teaspoons of sugar." He confirmed as he turned over in his stool to look directly at her, and studied her closely as she began to perspire under his domineering gaze, "You definitely took out that amount?"

"Yes, absolutely! I took out two teaspoons of sugar from the bag and poured the rest of the sugar in your cup. That's what you said I should do… right?" At that moment, the corner of Anti-Cosmo's eyebrow twitched in annoyance, and Anti-Wanda wish she hadn't noticed. It was then she realised with a hard swallow that she had made a vital mistake, "Th-that's… not what you meant… was it?"

"That's quite simply astounding, Anti-Wanda." Anti-Cosmo sighed with exasperation as he ran his hand over his face in complete exhaustion, "It's as if you purposely set out to do everything entirely wrong in the most implausible way possible. I'd say that's your skill right there. You excel in incompetence."

Anti-Wanda shifted her feet on the ground as her shameful gaze fell to the floor.

"Don't say that…"

Anti-Cosmo picked up on her downbeat reply suddenly, and noticed in an instant how utterly beaten down she seemed to be. As she fidgeted with her slender fingers, and as the corners of her lips quivered in a poor attempt to keep herself from showing her misery, Anti-Cosmo felt an uncomfortable stab in his chest, and he froze in fear of it as it suddenly overwhelmed him. He didn't like this feeling of discomfort in the pits of his stomach, he didn't like that Anti-Wanda looked so vulnerable, and he was especially disturbed by how he seemed to feel incredibly uneasy with the fact that he had made her feel this way.

In an effort to sway his unease, and to distract himself from the aching pains in his chest every time he looked over at her disheartened expression, Anti-Cosmo lifted himself from his stool and strode towards a nearby cabinet. Before Anti-Wanda could ask what he was doing, Anti-Cosmo suddenly turned on his heels the moment he pulled out an odd looking tool from the contents of the cabinet drawers.

"Wh-what's that you got there?" She dared to ask as she managed to lift herself from the desk.

"What I hold in my hand is something you should have already become familiar with, if you're the anti-fairy I believed you to be." Anti-Cosmo told her sternly as he held it up in the air for her to see, "It's a magical tool that has aided our kind for generations, it's a gateway that summons us to an area where bad luck is most prone to occur, but to a human's eye… it is just an ordinary a horseshoe."

"A horseshoe?" Anti-Wanda repeated as her head tilted slightly to the side in wonder, and her eyes remained locked on the horseshoe as if she expected it to jump straight out of Anti-Cosmo's fingers. Anti-Cosmo inspected her closely, and as she stared blankly in return, he used this opportunity to test out the extent of Anti-Wanda's knowledge.

"I don't suppose it's much to ask if you can tell me why it is considered to be such a significant piece of apparatus for our line of work."

"Sure, I can give it a shot." Anti-Wanda told him nonchalantly as she slowly approached him with her curious eyes closely surveying the object. But after a few silent moments, Anti-Cosmo grew intensely impatient the more Anti-Wanda squinted at it, as if the answer was just about to appear in bright neon lights ahead of her, until she turned to Anti-Cosmo with widened eyes, "I don't know how this helps anti-fairies at all, but I'm more confused on how this can be used as a shoe for horses! I mean, where would the horse's feet fit in? It just looks like the letter 'u' to me!"

"I didn't ask how a horse uses this thing, did I? Besides, the human name for this item has no relevance towards its real function." Anti-Cosmo sighed impatiently as he held it closer to her, "It might come as a shock to you, but you're actually on to something with that last sentence you said. It does look like the letter 'u'. When the ends of the horseshoe stand up like this, then all of the good luck is kept inside of it like a container. With that logic in mind, how do you suppose we remove the good luck from its contents?"

Slowly, Anti-Wanda carefully slid her fingers underneath the horseshoe and handled it as if it was as fragile as glass. She brought it towards her, inspected it cautiously, and Anti-Cosmo waited in anticipation. The way she observed every inch of the horseshoe lead him to believe that she was on the verge of a revolutionary breakthrough, and Anti-Cosmo almost held his breath as he waited for the answer to spring from her mouth… until all his hopes for her was promptly shattered the moment Anti-Wanda dropped her mouth open, and hungrily bit into it. Anti-Wanda gnawed ferociously on it with tremendous strength until Anti-Cosmo quickly snatched it out of her mouth.

"Are you crazed? What the hell are you doing to this thing?" Anti-Cosmo shouted, and watched in total surprise when Anti-Wanda bit down on her lower lip in an attempt to withhold her widened smile.

"Wasn't it obvious? I was trying to eat it," she stated simply with a misshapen grin, "After all, wouldn't the good luck disappear completely if I ate it whole? Technically, I am right! And you know it!"

Anti-Cosmo felt his eyebrow twitching once again in annoyance as he stared at her in almost mystified awe.

"Alright, you're… not wrong. But that wasn't the answer I was hoping for! And I'm starting to notice a trend here… you're just obsessed with food, aren't you?" Anti-Cosmo looked over the incredibly large bite marks on his horseshoe and glanced over to her ever-present grinning face, and almost winced at how bright of a smile she displayed for him.

Anti-Cosmo reluctantly admitted to himself… _it isn't entirely unpleasant to look at._

"So, Anti-Teacher, what _is_ the answer you were hoping for?" Anti-Wanda teased as she leant back against the desk once again with her hands rested on her hips.

"Let's keep to formalities before you get too caught up in the idea of adopting cute nicknames, shall we, _Anti-Wanda? _I still have a reputation to maintain at this wretched academy._" _He stressed as he temporarily removed his monocle to clean it with the hem of his shirt, "In case you had forgotten, I intend on making you my first and faithful subordinate towards my end goal as dominator of this universe. And in order to fulfil this duty, you must have the ability to… have at least one ability in _something. _After all, how else am I meant to exploit your talents for my own personal gain?"

"My, you really don't beat around the bush, do you?" Anti-Wanda bared her crooked teeth into a wider grin, "I didn't realise there was a specific job description. Do I at least get paid for this?"

"On the contrary… I believe it was _you_ who had paid _me._ Don't you remember our transaction, Anti-Wanda? You gave me your soul." Anti-Cosmo replied without an ounce of humour, and an intimidating smirk widened upon his lips as he dared to venture closer to her.

Then, without warning, Anti-Wanda gasped in surprise as Anti-Cosmo suddenly grabbed hold of Anti-Wanda's wrist and held it up in the air. His tight grip around her arm had her pinned towards him, and her terrified eyes locked to his as her breath was promptly drawn out her lungs. Anti-Cosmo was determined to keep his hardened gaze towards her and he remained motionless as his stern eyes captured all of her senses. Anti-Wanda's lips became a thin line as she nervously pressed them together, and she silently gulped as her forehead glistened with perspiration. She was beginning to lose her nerve.

And that was exactly what Anti-Cosmo was hoping for.

"Burn this into your memory and don't ever forget this… you gave yourself to _me!_ You gave your word to work under me, and you will not take this responsibility so lightly. There is a lot you must learn. However, though you're lacking in skills, you are _not_ hopeless. So take this in pride and remember; you're working for the most brilliant mind in the entirety of this facility now, and I will personally make it my mission to transform you into the finest subordinate known to all mankind. You must become strong, become adaptable, become resilient, and in doing so, you will become more powerful than you had ever possibly thought you could be. For the cost of your soul, I'd say this is a rather acceptable deal. Agreed?"

Anti-Wanda could only nod in compliance, as she was almost frozen beneath his determined gaze. She observed how much personal strength he withheld, and how much confidence he had within him, and it was simply breath-taking. And suddenly she could no longer feel herself breathing as he slowly pulled her closer towards him, until she was only mere inches away from pressing against him. Their faces were dangerously close as the fiery passion of his words had ignited a fire in both of their eyes, and Anti-Cosmo's fangs seemed to grow longer as he scowled. When he continued, his voice was low and intimidating,

"You're going to reach the pinnacle of your capabilities, Anti-Wanda, because I'm going to teach you how. You'll find your uses by working towards a cause… _my_ cause! And I will not allow you to fail. Because you're an extension of me now. Your mistakes will be a result of my own negligence, and I will not tolerate any hindrances in our progression into greatness. I swear to you now, you will reach the peak of perfection under my wing, and you will mark the beginning of the greatest movement in all of anti-fairy history. Because with me, you can achieve anything. So do you understand now, Anti-Wanda? Do you realise your significance yet? You're a solider in training, you're a mind yet to be carved… you're _mine!"_

Anti-Wanda's eyes widened all the more as he ended on that note. And suddenly, Anti-Cosmo's relentless speech stumbled into a halt as he realised the true extent of his words.

_You're mine!_

And for a few silent moments, the chilled breeze of the wind that whistled passed them cut through the heated atmosphere that surrounded them, and as their eyes remained locked to each other, there was a strange heaviness that lingered in the air. There was a silence that dragged on between them as Anti-Cosmo's firm grip around Anti-Wanda's wrist remained unmoving, with a heat that pierced through their skins. Neither of them could pin down what had just occurred, neither of them could describe the moment they experienced together, all one could do was stare at the other… and wonder why those words had stopped their heartbeats.

Anti-Cosmo held up the horseshoe once more, and without loosening his grip on her wrist or breaking his gaze away from her, his voice finally softened as he asked once more,

"But first, answer me this… how is it possible to empty good luck from a horseshoe?"

Anti-Wanda slowly shook her head as her eyes remained paralyzed within his austere stare, and her voice was equally as quiet and softened,

"I really don't know…"

And so, as if by command, Anti-Cosmo skilfully flipped the horseshoe within his palm and caught it upside down, then firmly passed it along to place it in her hand. As he pulled her wrist between them, she gripped on to the horseshoe tightly between their shared gaze, and Anti-Wanda blinked twice as she spoke her first thoughts aloud,

"Oh, now it looks like the letter 'n'…"

"Yes, that's exactly right. When a horseshoe is displayed with the ends faced down, this allows all of the good luck to fall out, and thus creates a gateway for an anti-fairy to detect an unlucky occurrence. Does that make sense to you?" Anti-Cosmo asked as Anti-Wanda peered closely towards the horseshoe, before her eyes lit up in understanding when the concept slowly crept up on her.

"Yeah… yeah, I think I got it now!"

Anti-Cosmo finally released her wrist as he stood back with his hands rested triumphantly on his hips.

"See, what did I tell you? You listened and you learned. And if we pick up the pace, who knows what you could be accomplishing within the next few months. Hell, it might not even take that long! With a teacher like me by your side, you might just be exemplary material in the next few weeks! That's right, it doesn't seem so far out of the realm of possibility now! You'll be performing well beyond your means in no time, Anti-Wanda. You're not hopeless at all. I just knew it. You'll be perfect!"

As Anti-Cosmo's excitement had him pacing around her, and as his diabolical laughter echoed throughout the spacious studio, his mind raced with all of his visions of the future. He could picture it all: an image of his figure sitting on top of a throne resided first and foremost, with Anti-Wanda cracking a whip by his side as the slaves of the Earth and Fairy World were forced into manual labour, and ordered to erect a statue of Anti-Cosmo's likeness in place of the Lincoln Memorial.

His crooked smile widened as he continued to imagine it all. And his dream started right there with Anti-Wanda… trained to be vigilant and unfeeling… toughened up into the ultimate commander… with a face so hard and terrifying that an entire army wouldn't even dream of challenging her…

But Anti-Cosmo's face immediately fell as he turned back to face her… with a horseshoe sticking out of her mouth.

Anti-Wanda shot him a guilty smile, and perspired all the more as she felt as if Anti-Cosmo was burning her alive with a red-hot angered look washed over his face. His eyebrow was twitching ferociously as his fury rose, and his fists clasped into fists by his sides as they shook with rage at her. And Anti-Wanda's only liable response was to continue to gnaw on the horseshoe, until she spat it out with a look of disgust, and confirmed aloud,

"Good luck tastes really terrible. Who knew?"

…

"I'm losing my mind already." Anti-Cosmo spoke aloud, and his hopelessness wasn't lost in his voice.

He shuffled along the salad bars of the Anti-Fairy Academy cafeteria with a tray in hand, and idly picked out his food as Anti-Jorgen followed close behind. Completely opposite of his counterpart, Jorgen Von Strangle, Anti-Jorgen was short and lanky, weak and soft-hearted with a down-to-earth attitude, and an accentuated square jaw sat acutely on his small neck and shoulders. Whenever he nodded, Anti-Cosmo would comment on his likeness to a bobble-head.

"Is the tutoring session not going as you hoped?" Anti-Jorgen asked with concern as he picked up an apple, "Y'know I have to say, I'm not at all surprised. You're an incredibly private guy, Anti-Cosmo, and I'm actually impressed that you've managed to survive the entire morning without burning the entire academy down!"

Anti-Cosmo simply snorted in reply as he dragged his feet towards a cafeteria table beside the largest stained glass window in the room.

The afternoon weather was the same as it always had been in Anti-Fairy world, with storm clouds that circled above them and red-tinted rays of light that lavished through the multi-coloured glass panes of the window. With only a select few windows decorating the fortress-like brick walls, the cafeteria looked dark and sinister if not for the few speckles of candlelit flames lighting up small areas of the room. And as Anti-Cosmo and Anti-Jorgen sat in the well-lit portion of the cafeteria, their shining figures almost signified their enormous presence in the room. Anti-Cosmo's reputation set a wave of faint whispers around them, as it was rare to catch a glimpse of him outside of his studio, but he was in no mood to relish the attention he was receiving at that moment.

"I knew this wasn't going to be an easy task. I knew that this was going to require a lot of hard work, but I had _no_ idea just how difficult this was really going to be. I've clearly bitten off more than I can chew with this girl." Anti-Cosmo told Anti-Jorgen as his agitation got the better of him, and he rubbed his fingers over his temples, "Can anti-fairies even get headaches? Because my head is literally pounding! It feels like there are two chainsaws digging through my ears and they're meeting in the middle!"

"Yeesh! She really is a handful, huh?" Anti-Jorgen nonchalantly took a bite of his apple and continued to speak his mind with his mouth full, "Hey, I was lead to believe that you're 'the _great_ Anti-Cosmo, evil genius and sole heir of the anti-fairy throne'… I didn't think that one lone anti-fairy could get the better of you, but clearly we're underestimating this girl. If she can bring down the most feared anti-fairy in the entire academy, then we really have no idea what we're dealing with here. No doubt that this girl is the true mastermind that will one day rule the entire universe."

"Spare me the sarcasm, alright? My humour can only take so much for one morning." Anti-Cosmo scowled as he stared daggers at his friend from across the table, "Anyway, I wish that were the case. Right now, it'd be a stroke of fortune if she could master how to properly use a toaster."

"Now that would be an achievement." Anti-Jorgen smirked with a snort of laughter, "I've never personally met the girl, but I've heard the stories. I've recently heard this Anti-Wanda didn't show up for a week of classes because she had food poisoning. Apparently, she was lead to believe that the vials in the science theatre were experimental food substances… despite the skull and crossbones labelled on each and every one of them. I mean, how gluttonous do you have to be to even attempt that? Maybe she just wanted to see what poison tasted like."

As Anti-Jorgen laughed to himself, Anti-Cosmo scowled and dismissed him with a wave of his hand and a look of distaste plastered over his face,

"I don't listen to childish gossip. So don't feed me that crap."

Anti-Jorgen quickly shut up as he said this. He knew better than to antagonise Anti-Cosmo, even if he was his friend, he also knew that he was no special exception when it came to Anti-Cosmo's alleged long line of victims. Anti-Jorgen coughed into his hand and cleared his throat to keep his mind distracted from the intimidation that shook him to his very core, and soon changed the subject.

"So… what's your plan, then? If she's going to be too much for you to handle, does this mean that you're not going through with this project? Are you thinking of ditching her?"

Anti-Cosmo's fangs poked through his lips as his scowl turned into a snarl, and he replied sharply,

"Who do you think you're talking to? Idiot, you forget just who you have the privilege of sharing your lunch with." Anti-Cosmo stared him down as Anti-Jorgen began to shrink down in his seat, "I wield the smartest mind in the entire academy, I'm the epitome of all things evil, and _I_ don't back down when the going gets tough. When something appears to be difficult, it doesn't mean that I won't go through with it. I don't refuse a challenge, I'm not that spineless! And I never said I'd give up on her."

Again, Anti-Cosmo found himself stumbling to halt as his monologue ended on that somewhat sombre note, and the fleeting image of Anti-Wanda's vulnerable face passed quickly through his mind.

"Okay, man, sorry. I was… just asking." Anti-Jorgen said quietly as his voice almost shook with nerves.

"I know. It's alright." Anti-Cosmo sat back on his chair and sighed, then he ran his hand over his face once more as his conflicting feelings were getting the better of him, "I shouldn't lose my temper so quickly. It's not professional. But I suppose it's been a tiring morning, so I'm not entirely myself right now."

"Hey, I don't blame you. There's a lot that you're dealing with right now, even someone as prestigious as you is prone to stress every now and again." Anti-Jorgen assured him, and his shoulders fell in relief as he saw Anti-Cosmo's irritation finally disappear from his expression, "Look, I know you want to train Anti-Wanda into your subordinate, but I also know that you want to complete that earthquake machine in time for the Friday 13th event in two weeks. Now I'm not saying that you're not capable of doing it, but I'm thinking realistically and practically here. And given the time restraint, do you really think you'll be able to do both at the same time?"

Anti-Cosmo was silent for a moment as he rested his chin on his hands, and thought deeply for a moment. Then, when all logical signs finally pointed towards the disappointing truth, he sighed once more and glared at Anti-Jorgen with a childish pout,

"Alright. You have a fair point… but I'm not at all happy about it!" Anti-Cosmo sulked as Anti-Jorgen almost glowed with satisfaction from his response, "Dammit Anti-Jorgen, do you always have to act as my voice of reason? Can't you just let me live in my own unrealistic world for a little while longer?"

"Absolutely not. I have a responsibility to deflate your bloated ego every once and a while. Besides, you have to share this bleak reality with the rest of us, and no one else does a better job of reminding you of that than me." Anti-Jorgen grinned as he finished off the rest of his apple, before he threw the core over his shoulder and into a nearby garbage pail, "And I, for one, take great pride in my sensible attributes, unlike my dim-witted fairy counterpart Jorgen. So we've got the same gigantic heads, but at least I can say that mine is screwed on correctly."

"You do have a sensible head on your shoulders, I will admit that much. Albeit, it's a jarring and unnaturally large head, but it's screwed on tight." Anti-Cosmo nodded in agreement as he crossed his arms over his chest, and although his grin was crooked, his voice was sincere, "You're a good man, Anti-Bobble Head."

"And you make the most ham-fisted attempts at compliments, Anti-Cosmo, but I appreciate the fact that you tried. I'll have to remember that you said that on my bad days."

The two boys sat in a contented silence for a moment as Anti-Cosmo's arms stretched into the air. He moaned as he felt his muscles unhinge and unwind, and he sighed as he rested his cheek to his palm with his elbow leant over the table. His food remained untouched and forgotten as his mind drifted away. And before he knew it, his mind wandered to the images of _her_ again. He flinched as he acknowledged his heartbeat growing faster the more he thought of her, and he quietly swallowed hard when the image of her burning eyes had disarmed him.

_This girl… this simple-minded fool… how is she able to hold my attention for this long? What is it about her that makes her so…_

He couldn't find the right words to finish that sentence.

Then he let his mind linger on her for a few more moments before he finally laid his hands flat against the table surface, and his dark eyes met up with Anti-Jorgen's as his voice grew serious and low,

"Alright, I've finally made up my mind. I'm going to concentrate on completing my earthquake device, and when it's submitted into the Friday 13th event, I'll claim that it was a joint effort with the help of Anti-Wanda. There's nothing in the rules against group projects. So whilst the school board is under the impression that this will result in her rise in studies, I'll actually be keeping her occupied with small menial tasks that will train her into the warrior that I know she will become."

"You make it sound so easy." Anti-Jorgen commented with a sarcastic grin.

"You know as well as I do that it's much easier said than done. But saying it aloud makes it all sound so possible, and that's all I need to get started." Anti-Cosmo told him with determination blazing in his eyes.

And as his wandering gaze turned over to the oversized stained glass window looming over them, as he observed the glistening array of colours raining down on his face, his attention fell upon the fiery rays of light that shone a brilliant blood red colour along the cracks of the glass pane. As he squinted his eyes, the trick of the light brightened the shade into a warm rose-tinted colour that reminded him of a certain set of vibrant irises…

…_the fire…_

Finally, Anti-Cosmo whispered his determined thoughts aloud,

"I will pull this off. I'll stake my life on it. I'll create the perfect army force and seize this world by storm. And I won't give up on her. You can count on that."

…

The lunch hour had ended, and Anti-Cosmo trudged up the winding stairwell towards his personal studio. But as he pushed through the entrance door, he was almost surprised to come across Anti-Wanda already there sitting on the end of his desk with an eager pair of sparkling eyes shot straight towards him. It was a surreal feeling to find someone waiting for him in his own studio, as he had become so familiar to the vast emptiness that it brought, and he had even dared to accustom his loneliness to the feeling of coming home. However, with Anti-Wanda intruding his space, Anti-Cosmo found himself somewhat on edge, as he felt he could be completely himself amongst the spacious desolation. With Anti-Wanda around, he felt as if every footstep he made was being evaluated.

At first, he ignored her presence as he strode past her with his eyes set on the incomplete piece of machinery situated in the middle of the studio. He inspected it closely as he watched out for any signs of tampering or damage. But as Anti-Wanda's watchful eyes traced his every move, Anti-Cosmo felt his ears burning into a deep shade of red. No doubt she was eager for another lesson, he confirmed, as Anti-Cosmo had quickly noticed what lay in her lap.

A notepad and a pencil.

_She's prepared herself for this…_

"So, Anti-Teach… I mean, Anti-Cosmo… what are you going to show me now?" Anti-Wanda called out to him as she bounced from the desk and gripped a tight hold of her notebook, "Is it another weapon of mass destruction? Another tool that manifests the very essence of bad luck? Oh, how about a _laser gun!_ I don't know why, but laser guns always seem like the most evil weapon a bad guy can ever own."

Anti-Cosmo stifled a small laugh before bluntly replying,

"No, no tools of mass destruction, no bad luck devices… and no laser guns. You really need to quit watching those movies of yours."

Anti-Wanda's face suddenly fell with disappointment before she asked him unsteadily,

"So what are we going to do, then?"

"Well, what _you're_ going to do for me is sit at that desk, stay still and keep quiet for the rest of the day." Anti-Cosmo firmly told her as he pointed towards the stool beside her, and squared his hardened eyes at her before asking, "You think you can manage that?"

"Um, sure. Okay. I can do that…" Anti-Wanda replied as she was somewhat caught off guard by this simple requirement, and nervously stretched her slender legs over the stool to fall on top of it. Then, her large eyes looked woefully back to Anti-Cosmo as she looked for approval from him, and in response, Anti-Cosmo quickly averted his gaze from her.

Somehow, the sight of her glassy eyes riddled with uncertainty had become too much to look at, and Anti-Cosmo winced in disgust at himself as he busied himself in his work. He knew he was stronger than this, he knew he was capable of enduring much harsher torture and punishment, and so he became furious at himself when the simple image of Anti-Wanda's vulnerability was easily making him squirm. This was not like him at all.

As he continued to distract himself in his work, Anti-Wanda watched curiously from the side-lines. Again, Anti-Cosmo felt slightly put off as he suddenly found himself an audience, and for reasons unknown to him at that moment, he felt uneasy about the fact that it was Anti-Wanda watching him so closely.

Every now and again, his eyes would quickly flicker over to Anti-Wanda to check up on her, and as their eyes suddenly locked together, his flustered gaze shot in the other direction. He couldn't keep her in sight for too long, he found that he couldn't bare it. She was too much of a distraction, she was too much of an interesting case, and Anti-Cosmo had no time to wonder why. And even if he did have the time, Anti-Wanda seemed to cloud his mind too much. His calculating world would halt, the fog would take over, until one single aspect of her overcame all else…

…_her eyes, and the warmth within…_

His heartbeat stopped and he froze for a moment. A fleeting feeling of sheer panic overtook him and a heaviness weighed down on his chest, until he ferociously shook his head and dismissed the entire notion. Whatever was going on with him at that point can wait until later, he concluded, and concentrated harder on his work.

Anti-Wanda chewed on the end of her pencil as she leant forward and sighed with boredom. She clicked her tongue and tapped her foot, fiddled with her pencil and her fingers, and finally yawned loudly as her eyes became heavy. Anti-Cosmo tried his best to ignore this, but as Anti-Wanda's yawning became more frequent, his eyebrow began to twitch fiercely with irritation.

"Am I doing a good job of sitting still?" She asked him from afar, and Anti-Cosmo didn't even bother with a reply. When she found that she was being ignored, Anti-Wanda pouted and took a deep breath, before she loudly shouted, "Hey, Anti-Cosmo! Can you hear me? Am I doing this right?!"

"What part of 'keep quiet' didn't you understand?!" Anti-Cosmo suddenly shouted back through his clenched teeth. Anti-Wanda pouted in return before she wildly and impatiently waved her pencil at him.

"I understand perfectly fine! But I'm just so bored." Anti-Wanda's pout remained as she sulked on her stool, and her voice softened almost into a plea, "Can't you teach me more about bad luck and stuff like that? This morning was so much fun. Let's do more things like that together! Can't you let me help you at least?"

Anti-Cosmo tried to ignore how many times his heart slammed against his chest as she said this. And without purposely making eye contact with her, Anti-Cosmo firmly pressed on without letting his voice waver,

"You're helping me by not doing anything for the time being. So… stay there and keep out of my way."

"Alright… if that's what you think is best." Anti-Wanda shrank into herself as her voice was quiet, and her fingers anxiously ran down the ocean-coloured curls that spilt over her shoulder. Once more, she gathered up enough confidence to plead to him again with more determination evident in her voice, "Just let me know if I can help you in any way. Okay? I mean, that's what I'm here for."

Anti-Cosmo rolled his eyes at this, and coldly dismissed her without even looking at her,

"I'll let you know if I ever get to the point where I need _your_ help. Pray for my immortal soul if I ever do…"

"Oh stop saying things like that, will you? I feel like I'm getting emotional whiplash every time I talk to you about this." Anti-Wanda sharply interrupted him as her anger flared in her eyes.

Anti-Cosmo immediately noticed how upset Anti-Wanda had sounded as she snapped at him, and he paused when his heart suddenly sank to his stomach. And when he finally managed to pull himself away from his work to turn around, his breath had been caught in his throat as he saw just how furious he had inadvertently made her. Anti-Wanda's eyes were hard and unrelenting, as if flames had literally erupted from her angered gaze, and Anti-Cosmo was stunned.

Anti-Wanda took a moment to breathe, but her anger never wavered. Then as she spoke, Anti-Cosmo was shocked by how matured her voice suddenly became, and how serious she sounded,

"You know I honestly have no idea where I stand with you right now. I don't even know if you realise you're doing this, but you treat me like I'm this helpless screw-up who can't even be trusted to tie her own shoelaces, when earlier this morning you convinced me that I didn't have to feel that way. You told me so yourself. You said that I have the potential to do so much more than I ever realised. So how am I supposed to improve and feel like less of a screw-up when you won't even give me a chance?"

Anti-Cosmo couldn't bring himself to speak out loud as he felt as if he was just slapped across the face. He could feel an incredibly sinking feeling in his gut that turned over his stomach, and it worsened once her words finally began to sink in. He stepped forward with his hand awkwardly stretched out, but he was too startled to even think. All he could manage to do was to drop his mouth open and stammer like a slack-jawed idiot,

"Anti-Wanda… I, um…"

"This morning was so much fun." She interrupted him once again as her voice remained harsh and unchanged, "You made me feel like I can achieve great things because you told me that I have the ability to learn, adapt and get better. I've never felt like I could ever feel like that. For so long, I've been battered and beaten down by my own failures. But I suppose you wouldn't know what it means to feel like this… I mean, do you truly understand what it's like to be so unsure of everything you do? Do you have any idea how it feels to be so incompetent at the job you were born to do? I'm an _anti-fairy!_ It's in my nature to create chaos and destruction… but the only person I'm capable of destroying is myself…"

Suddenly, Anti-Wanda coughed up a storm as she clutched on to the base of her throat, and just as her coughing fit had begun to calm down, her gaze wandered solemnly to the floor as she felt too ashamed to return back to Anti-Cosmo. She was quiet, her voice was raw, and the tone had stabbed at Anti-Cosmo's chest as she continued,

"Only recently did I allow myself to trust some scientist's word about an experiment in the laboratories. I wanted so badly to prove that I could be useful to someone that I let myself drink vials of poison so that I could help out in their experiments… but, what a surprise, it turns out I was wrong about all that. Turns out they only wanted to see if I would go through with it. And, like an idiot, I did. And I was just barely able to survive. I was stupid to think that they would've wanted my help in the first place… so I failed myself again… I've let my failures defeat me for as long as I can remember…"

Quickly, Anti-Wanda's eyes shot up from the ground and captured Anti-Cosmo's gaze once more, and he could only stare back with wide-eyed shock as he saw the desperation clear in her expression.

"But it was you… Anti-Cosmo, you made me believe that I could do anything. You made me believe that I have a chance at a better life. You made me believe that everything was going to be okay. As long as I had you to show me the way, then I could practically take the universe for myself. As long as I was by your side… I was convinced… I had a chance. But if you won't give me that chance, then there's just no use for me at all."

Anti-Cosmo… was absolutely speechless. Then, a large heaviness firmly grasped a hold of his heart as he felt the weight of it push down to his gut.

This was all because of Anti-Wanda.

It was all because of the way he treated her, and because he finally realised just what he had done to her. He didn't fully understand that although Anti-Wanda agreed to be his subordinate, she was still a woman with her own mind, no matter how small. And he didn't realise just how much of an impact he had already made on her, despite only knowing her for a day. But, he reluctantly began to realise… Anti-Wanda had actually made an incredible impact on him too. She wasn't just an afterthought to him, she wasn't something he could very easily ignore… she was…

…_Anti-Wanda. I don't want you to feel like this. I never want to make you feel like this. You're not useless, you're no failure… you're…_

Before Anti-Cosmo could open his mouth to even attempt to speak to her, suddenly the entrance door of the studio swung open and quickly captured the two anti-fairies attention. The sombre atmosphere faded almost immediately as they recognised who stood waiting patiently in the doorway. And, to Anti-Cosmo's sudden dismay, Anti-Wanda's face brightened up into a wide smile.

"Anti-Juandissimo."

Anti-Wanda breathed his name as if she was incredibly relieved to see him. And immediately, Anti-Cosmo scowled with unprecedented annoyance.

"_Mi amor,_ Anti-Wanda, _qué hermosa te ves! _I've been looking forward to seeing you all day." Anti-Juandissimo told her affectionately as he hobbled over to her side and gently took her hand into his. And as Anti-Wanda visibly blushed from this, Anti-Cosmo's scowl turned into a snarl.

Anti-Juandissimo, the opposite of Juandissimo in looks, was a hunchback with displeasing physical attributes that made him fairly unpopular at the academy. No one could stand to look at him for too long, as his likeness was based more on Quasimodo rather than his fairy counterpart. However, Anti-Wanda was the exception as she was able to see him for everything he was beyond how he looked.

Anti-Cosmo, however, was less than pleased. He didn't like the way that Anti-Wanda's smile lingered as Anti-Juandissimo brought her hand between his, and Anti-Cosmo almost audibly growled in distaste when Anti-Juandissimo whispered quiet romantic words in his native language to her ear. Then as Anti-Wanda softly laughed as Anti-Juandissimo's lips were dangerously close to brushing against her cheek, Anti-Cosmo quickly strode forward and towered over him. Then almost immediately, Anti-Juandissimo broke contact with Anti-Wanda and leant backwards as he cowered in Anti-Cosmo's overbearing shadow.

"Did I say that you have permission to come in here?" He asked with hostility.

"No, no, you did not! Forgive me, my friend, I apologise for the interruption!" Anti-Juandissimo nervously waved his hands at him as he almost knelt at the knees for his mercy, and his eyes flickered to Anti-Wanda as he dared to lean his arm around her shoulders and subtly cover himself behind her, "I only mean to visit my girlfriend as I hear her classes reside here now… b-but if I am intruding then I shall go… I-I mean, I understand that your work is important and I, um, I'd hate to get in the way…"

"It's alright." Anti-Wanda assured Anti-Juandissimo softly and smiled gently to him, and Anti-Cosmo's eyebrow twitched with irritation, "Actually, I'm glad you're here. I'm suddenly not feeling very well… I think I'd like to leave now."

"What?" Anti-Cosmo turned to her in shock, and he stammered once again as his guilt had rendered him powerless with little to no strength to object to this, "Anti-Wanda… it's barely passed noon, a-and we haven't finished here…"

"Yes, but I'm still recovering from food poisoning… don't you remember what I told you? Besides, you told me yourself that you don't need my help. And I know when I'm not needed. So am I allowed an afternoon off to rest?"

The way that Anti-Wanda asked this made it sound as if she was genuinely asking him for the time off. It was then that Anti-Cosmo realised she had still considered the fact that she had agreed to be his subordinate, and so even in the face of her declining health, she wouldn't deliberately go against his orders. Anti-Cosmo was too stunned to even reply. Then, as his silence lingered on, Anti-Wanda's voice suddenly softened into an agonising plea,

"…please?"

Anti-Cosmo's lips pressed together in a thin line as he couldn't take much more of this.

"Fine. Go and rest." Anti-Cosmo reluctantly told her, although it was tearing him up inside that he had to let her go on that sombre note. So before he turned his back to her, his final words to her wavered as a stern order with a tinge of concern, as his unease was painted all over his expression, "I expect you back here in the studio tomorrow morning, so… take it easy and rest well. Okay?"

Anti-Wanda only nodded in reply before she turned to Anti-Juandissimo who had latched on to her shoulders like a scared child. She patiently smiled at him once more before she gently asked,

"Can you take me home?"

"_Por supuesto_, of course, of course! Here, let me carry your things. I'll make sure you get home safely, _la cariño." _Anti-Juandissimo told her with enthusiasm and grabbed a hold of her pencil and notebook, then lifted her up from the stool before holding her close to lead her towards the doorway.

Anti-Cosmo stared at the ground as he refused to catch a glimpse of her before she left. When unbeknownst to him, Anti-Wanda had actually glanced over her shoulder to Anti-Cosmo before they managed to reach the doorway, and sighed as she slowly began to descend the winding stairway out of the studio with Anti-Juandissimo close to hand. Until Anti-Cosmo was left to his home in solitude.

And all he could think about was the lost look in Anti-Wanda's eyes… that he was responsible for.

Anti-Cosmo picked up his rusted monkey wrench, and furiously threw it across the studio.

…

…

…

The dormitory halls of Anti-Cosmo's home was quiet and desolate, before he begrudgingly pushed himself through the front door and dragged his feet along the carpet as if the weight of the world had pressed down on his shoulders. When he stormed inside the kitchen residing to his right, the sudden smell of pasta and chicken quickly hit his face like a bulldozer. Anti-Cosmo scanned the kitchen to find his two roommates cooking up a storm by the stove, and it took a few seconds for either of them to even acknowledge Anti-Cosmo's sudden presence.

Anti-Jorgen was the first to turn over his shoulder and shout in surprise as he found Anti-Cosmo glaring back at him from the other side of the room.

"Oh, Christ, Anti-Cosmo… you're a sneaky bastard sometimes, you know." Anti-Jorgen breathed out steadily as he picked up the spatula that he had dropped.

Anti-Cosmo's second roommate had been busy chopping onions with a large sharp knife skilfully in hand, and had only peered up once to find Anti-Cosmo glancing back with an equally intimidating scowl. This onion-chopping anti-fairy was the only one in the entire academy who dared to size up to Anti-Cosmo's notorious personality, as he claimed to be just as evil and as crafty as he was.

This anti-fairy was Anti-Cupid. He was the sole opposite of the god of love Cupid who thrived on the bitterness and misery of anyone with a broken heart, and as he saw Anti-Cosmo at that moment, Anti-Cupid felt a smirk tugging at his lips.

"From the looks of you, it seems like you've had quite an eventful day." Anti-Cupid commented casually to Anti-Cosmo as he stopped chopping for a moment to point the sharpest end of his knife towards him with a demented grin, "You look like shit, Anti-Cosmo."

"Now is not the right time to be antagonising me, Anti-Cupid. I would have thought you'd have learnt this by now." Anti-Cosmo replied without an ounce of sarcasm. "Or do I need to demonstrate my power over you once more?"

Anti-Cupid quickly shut up as he reluctantly backed down. He glared at him one final time before going back to his onions and furiously cut each slice as if he had a personal vendetta against it.

Anti-Cosmo knew Anti-Cupid could never stand a chance against him. Anti-Cosmo was always too amused by how he looked and carried himself. Anti-Cupid would always go out of his way to look completely opposite to Cupid, his fairy counterpart. He would let his jet black hair wildly grow out of control so that it constantly fell over his eyes. The way that it stood out in an explosion of straggly hair looked as if he had just electrocuted himself. And he would use dark eyeliner to paint the Eye of Horus symbol around one of his eyes, as he believed this would further symbolise his unleashed power over Anti-Cosmo and over his fairy counterpart.

Then Anti-Cosmo would laugh as he often affiliated his likeness to Robert Smith of The Cure.

"So the tutoring sessions with Anti-Wanda aren't going as well as you hoped after all?" Anti-Jorgen asked, despite noticing how worn down and frustrated he looked.

"Anti-Wanda? You mean the girl who's dating that hunchback of Notre Dame?" Anti-Cupid chimed in as his pale blue-skinned face flushed with colour as his fury began to rise, "I'm familiar with those two. I've seen them walking around the grounds together… _holding hands…_ it was disgusting! I don't understand it at all. How could that girl even stand to be seen with someone like that?"

"I don't like the guy either." Anti-Cosmo agreed without hesitation and he winced as he reluctantly remembered how Anti-Juandissimo acted so affectionate around Anti-Wanda that afternoon, "And his voice is like nails scratching against a chalkboard. '_Mi amor, mi amor'… _give me a break…"

"So you don't like them together either, Anti-Cosmo? I'm honestly surprised, as you're usually so inclined to stay out of other people's affairs. I like this new attitude of yours. It's so bitter and hateful. We might actually get along after all." Anti-Cupid smirked as he shuffled closer to Anti-Cosmo from the kitchen table top, "And how about that Anti-Wanda girl, huh? I heard you've been stuck with her all day today. I gotta say, I don't envy you. You could crack open a bottle of champagne with that overbite of hers."

Suddenly Anti-Cosmo's anger quickly risen as his scowl returned tenfold, and Anti-Cupid nervously backed away in fear as Anti-Cosmo's blazing fury sparked a snarl from his fanged lips,

"I find it funny that you're so quick to judge other people's appearance when you're no catch yourself, Anti-Cupid. You're just a bad imitation of a goth who badly needs a hairbrush."

"You're all over the place today." Anti-Cupid told him as he anxiously turned back to his onions, "Well, whether you like this couple or not, I have a responsibility to stop this continuing any further. Love is disgusting and only breeds pain and jealousy, and as the most feared anti-fairy god against love, I have to follow through with my responsibilities no matter the cost."

"You made up that responsibility yourself." Anti-Cosmo nonchalantly commented as Anti-Jorgen laughed to himself from afar. Anti-Cupid then turned on his heels as his reddened face boiled over with his fury, before he snapped back in reply,

"If you hate this Anti-Juandissimo so much, then why don't you break them up? It would save me the trouble!" Anti-Cosmo lifted an eyebrow at him as he didn't even bother with a response, but Anti-Cupid didn't stop there, "Just think about how much misery you'll have brought to him if you go through with this. Wouldn't you want to do that to your enemies? Think about it! There are so many simple ways that you could do it, now that you have Anti-Wanda as your student. All you have to do is plant the seed and use her against him. Bring her over to your side, flirt with her, and make her believe that she's better off without him. Anti-Juandissimo will be crushed and heartbroken… doesn't that sound ideal?"

Anti-Cosmo glanced at Anti-Cupid's crooked grin and saw how deep the cracks in his smile really was. He remembered just how psychotically obsessed he was about his powerful position adjacent to Cupid, the god of love, and remembered why he didn't want to involve himself too closely to him.

"It does sound ideal… if you have an agenda against anything to do with Cupid, which you so obviously do." Then, as Anti-Cosmo continued, he felt his face heat up slightly into a red-tinged flush, "Besides, I told Anti-Wanda that I wouldn't try anything on her…"

"Wait…" Anti-Cupid gasped in surprise, and asked him suspiciously, "…what do you mean by that?"

"Nothing. Never mind. Forget I said anything." Anti-Cosmo brushed him aside as he quickly paced through the kitchen to bump past Anti-Jorgen. Then before he turned to exit the kitchen, he paused and refused to make eye contact as he left the two boys with these final sentiments, "I… hope you both know where you stand with me. If not… then I want to make this abundantly clear to the both of you. Although we have our fair share of disputes, and we don't always agree on everything… I consider the both of you to be my closest friends. That's all I have to say."

Anti-Cupid and Anti-Jorgen quickly exchanged stunned glances before they watched Anti-Cosmo promptly leave the kitchen. Neither of them called after him or said anything further on the matter, as they all left everything to slowly settle and sink in.

Meanwhile as Anti-Cosmo walked at a fast pace towards the solitude of his bedroom, he tried his best to fend off the lingering thoughts that shot through the depths of his heart. Anti-Wanda raced through his head, his voice echoed like a lingering phantom, and her sorrowful eyes had been burned into his mind. He tried to figure out how this lone woman could make such a hefty impact on him, he tried so hard to understand how she was able to break down his walls so easily… but every time he tried to find an answer, he was simply left in the dust.

_Anti-Wanda… _

As he paced down the dark halls of his home, as his final remaining strength barely stood him upright as he dragged himself along the dimly lit walls, Anti-Cosmo was abandoned to the mental image of the broken girl that refused leave his world.

…_I won't give up on you… you can count on that!_

…

…

…

_Chapter Two End. Thanks for reading this extra-long chapter! Chapter three will be released soon…_


	3. Angels On The Sideline

Chapter Three :: _Angels On The Sideline_

…

Anti-Cosmo glanced anxiously at the clock on the wall. Every second that went by seemed to drag on like minutes, and sometimes it would seem like agony as the hours slowly passed him by. His eyes would fall upon his dust-collecting desk that had remained empty and devoid of life all morning. And he sighed as he came to realise the truth of it all: Anti-Wanda was late, and he knew there must have been a reason why.

_Well done, Anti-Cosmo. Good job! You drove her away. She doesn't want to see you today…_

He leant beside the machine he had been working on all morning, and he refused to leave its side before Anti-Wanda arrived. His work was the only thing that could keep himself sane and level-headed, before his attention would wander to her… and idly wonder what she was doing at that very moment… and if she was purposely avoiding him that day…

Anti-Cosmo furiously shook his head to get rid of his self-doubts and his growing concern for this woman, and he immediately turned back to his work as he silently scolded himself for becoming soft. He wanted to keep himself busy, and keep his mind occupied as he wanted more than anything to keep thoughts of Anti-Wanda as far away from him as possible. To Anti-Cosmo, she was becoming a virus that was spreading through every inch of him, and it was making him sick by how much she was beginning to plague him. It got to the point where he was silently muttering to himself to keep him on track,

"Focus, man, focus! Think about finishing your project for the Friday 13th event. Think about winning the award for causing the worst luck to ever fall upon the Earth. Think about how you accomplished this incredible feat all by yourself without anyone's help… especially _her _help… not that I needed her help in the first place… although she might've been here already if I hadn't told her that…"

Anti-Cosmo paused in his work once again. His skilful fingers remained frozen around his tools as his eyes glazed over, and the creeping thoughts that he had tried so hard to fend off had begun to overtake his senses again. His world became blurry, the silence became loud and obnoxious, until the piercing rose-coloured inferno in Anti-Wanda's eyes cut through his thoughts, and her innocent and carefree smile broke through the fog…

He glanced over to the studio sink. Next to the kettle was his clean mug that he had purposely placed beside it. He had carefully prepared it for Anti-Wanda so he could prompt her to try making a cup of tea again. He was adamant that this time he wouldn't put her down so much. This time, he affirmed, he would give her credit when credit is due. He was willing to approach her in a different way, he was willing to change in order to accommodate the process of training her, and he would throw himself into the battlefield to keep her from slipping from his grasp. He was more serious about her than he had ever been about anything in his life. Because she was important to his big plan.

...Anti-Wanda was important to _him_.

And at that moment, the entrance door squeaked and slid open, and Anti-Cosmo's eyes quickly widened as far as they could go when he saw Anti-Wanda lingering anxiously in the doorway.

"Anti-Wanda… you finally made it." Anti-Cosmo breathed out as he tried not to sound relieved. But his voice betrayed him.

Anti-Wanda's eyes flickered away for a moment as she was suddenly hesitant to go inside. Then, after chewing on her bottom lip, she stepped uneasily inside and finally managed to build the courage to look him straight in the eye in return.

"Sorry I'm late. I lost track of time, that's all." She told him bashfully, and Anti-Cosmo's shoulders instantly fell in relief. He was glad that she wasn't avoiding him after all. Then he suddenly flinched as he internally scolded himself once again, until he stiffened in horror when Anti-Wanda continued, "I was at Anti-Juandissimo's place all night and I stayed over until morning. I must have let myself get carried away..."

In that instance, Anti-Cosmo's heart plummeted to his stomach, and he winched from the sudden pain it wrought. As he felt his heart suffer from an onslaught of harsh jabs, he refused to admit to himself that this was his jealousy brutally crying out to be recognised. His dark thoughts brought up various reasons why Anti-Wanda would have spent the night at her boyfriends, and he quickly supressed any growing ideas to keep himself sane as he gripped on to his aching chest. Anti-Wanda curiously looked over him as she spied his face drain with colour, until his fangs peaked through his lips when he suddenly scowled,

"Don't be late again, you understand? You have a responsibility to be punctual, and attend every one of our classes on time. That means you will have to be willing to make sacrifices and commit to your studies! You have to be willing to commit to me…" Anti-Cosmo stumbled once again, until he quickly shook his head to correct his mistake, "…commit to my cause. I mean, you have to commit to my cause! Didn't you say you wanted to get better and stop your failures defeating you? So don't give up on your goals for some guy!"

"I'm not giving up anything… and he's not just 'some guy'." Anti-Wanda scolded as she worked up the courage to defend herself, "I told you yesterday that I was feeling sick, so he spent the night taking care of me. I wouldn't call it an exciting night for either of us anyway. He mostly fed me soup and kept an eye on my temperature. And he was kind enough to give me his bed whilst he slept on the sofa, so I'm right in thinking that is worthy enough of neglecting my goals for one night, don't you agree?"

Anti-Cosmo stared her down as she had folded her arms and stood her ground. Once again, Anti-Wanda had proven that she was immune to Anti-Cosmo's intimidation, and he failed to shake her down as he had done with so many others in the past. Be that as it may, Anti-Cosmo wasn't willing to stop there as his voice became lower, and more serious,

"If you were smart, you'd know that giving even the slightest bit of attention on your pathetic relationship will delay the process of becoming great. My advice would be to split from this coward before he drags you down to his level. You're far better than you lead on, Anti-Wanda, I can see it within you. Once you start taking our training seriously, you'll find yourself moving forward at an exceedingly fast pace ahead of anyone else, and he'll only keep you behind. Trust me when I say that you're better off without that coward."

"You're really suggesting that I dump him?" Anti-Wanda asked incredulously as she paced around him towards the middle of the studio, "You don't get to lecture me on what's best for me! I don't care if I'm your underling or whatever, you don't get to decide my personal life! You just don't know Anti-Juandissimo like I do. I mean, okay, so he's a bit spineless, and it does get on my nerves when he doesn't speak up for himself… or for me… but I understand why he's like that. I understand that he's dealt with a lot of issues with himself, and I want to help him overcome all that. In fact, I've found that we're alike in a lot of ways when it comes to our self-esteem…"

"It all sounds quite one-sided, if you ask me." Anti-Cosmo told her truthfully as he nonchalantly shrugged his shoulders and attempted to keep his agitation at bay, "It seems to me that you make the effort to help build his confidence as much as you can, yet he's made no effort at all to return the favour."

"If that's the case, then he's not the only one doing that to me…" Anti-Wanda sadly told him as she clenched her hands into fists by her sides.

Again, Anti-Cosmo felt his heart sink within him as he realised Anti-Wanda had subtly brought up the argument they had the previous day. He swallowed hard as he realised that she wasn't wrong, and that he had to make things right if he even had the slightest chance of continuing the deal they had made to work together. Anti-Cosmo cleared his throat to regain his composure before starting again,

"You'll have to… forgive my inconsideration yesterday, Anti-Wanda. You must've already realised this by now, but I'm far too used to solitude, and I, uh, haven't had a lot of experience with working alongside someone else. Admittedly, my skills are lacking in that area. I'll be patient with you… if you'll be patient with me. I realise now that… morale is low, so I aim to fix that. And you're right, it was rude of me to suggest you do anything with your relationship. I won't pry into your personal life anymore. I have to ask that we forget yesterday ever happened, and ask you to give us a chance to start again. So would you permit me this favour, Anti-Wanda?"

She tapped her foot in response as she thought to herself for a moment, and she pursed her lips to the side as she worked her small mind into overdrive. Meanwhile Anti-Cosmo tried to ignore how loud his heartbeat pounded in his ears. And finally, Anti-Wanda sighed as she rested her fists on her hips, and she gazed back to Anti-Cosmo with a hopeless glaze in her expression, as if she couldn't keep up the act of holding a grudge for much longer.

"Sure, it's alright. I mean, even though I was mad at you, I didn't even think about quitting this. In fact I was wondering if I was maybe being too overly sensitive about the whole thing. I agreed to be your subordinate after all, so I should have expected things to get tough. So after we start again, don't feel as if you have to hold back in fear of hurting my feelings. I'm a big girl, I can deal with it. And I'll do my best to get better. I'll definitely be patient with you… if you are with me."

Anti-Wanda smiled as she slowly approached him with her softened eyes caught in his curious gaze. And swiftly, she picked his monocle from his eye and clutched it gently between her fingers. Then she cleaned the glass with her shirt, brought it to the light to inspect it for any more marks, and placed it back in its respective position.

After she finished, Anti-Cosmo begun to realise how incredibly understanding this girl was, and how caring she truly was despite her short-comings. She made up for her lack of skills in the way that she handled herself and the people around her, and Anti-Cosmo found himself becoming all the more interested in the way that she was. She was so perplexing, so peculiar, but she was also unlike any other individual he had ever faced in his life…

_Just who are you, really…_

"Alright, Anti-Wanda, it's a deal. We'll start over today." He adjusted his cleaned monocle as he felt his perspiring temple slightly burn up from the when her fingertips gently brushed against it.

"Good. I'll be honest, I was kinda expecting you to be a lot more pissed at me after all I said yesterday. I don't make a very submissive subordinate, do I?" Anti-Wanda laughed with her hand hovering over her beautiful wide smile, "And it would have been a shame if I couldn't come over anymore, because… I like coming here. I like how high up we are, I like how we're in the only part of the academy that gets natural Earth sunlight through our windows… and I liked how much fun we had yesterday morning."

The way that Anti-Wanda had ended her sentence had immediately caught Anti-Cosmo off guard. He saw how Anti-Wanda had slightly swung her hips over to her side to lean her weight on one foot, and he caught how she had bashfully ducked to the side to hide the hurried flush coming over her face. His eyebrows raised in surprise when she nervously grabbed at her arm and bit down on her lower lip before continuing rather quietly,

"I don't really have a lot of friends here at the academy, besides Anti-Juandissimo. I don't get to spend time with anyone else other than him. So it's nice to see a new face. And… you might think this is a little silly… but it's almost like we have a place to ourselves here. It's as if we've created our own world that shuts out the rest of society. I really hope you don't think this is too much too soon, but… I really do consider you as my friend, Anti-Cosmo."

Immediately, Anti-Cosmo turned away to cough into his hand. He had to keep himself from flushing in return as he felt his entire head heat up in response, and his heartbeat increased at an alarming rate. Anti-Wanda had once again caught him off guard, and his interest was snared once again as he had never met someone as open-hearted as she was. To his surprise, it was surprisingly refreshing. It was as if she was readily baring her soul to him, and he found himself admiring her all the more for it.

Then, he turned back to her and nodded sympathetically,

"Well… I can understand that not everyone is accustomed to living in solitude. We're similar to human beings in the fact that we are social creatures. It's just the simple truth of life… we need other people to survive." Anti-Cosmo harsh voice eased up as he began to realise this as a fact, "I'm far too used to being on my own… but even so, I'm not going to object to your, uh, company. However, you should know that I don't care what may eventually happen if things don't work out! Don't mistake this do-over for kindness… I still have the upper hand here, and you should remember your place!"

Anti-Wanda laughed again as Anti-Cosmo's sudden outburst about his dominance had been pulled out of nowhere. He was desperately grasping at his superior status to regain control, and he knew this. And he knew he needed her more than before as he had now envisioned a greater future with Anti-Wanda in the picture. Even so, he remained adamant in showing her that he truly didn't care whether or not she was going to stick around.

But he quickly froze in place when Anti-Wanda's crooked smile softened once again, and her eyes were gentle as her voice was genuinely sincere,

"Well, y'know… despite this very strange arrangement we've somehow landed ourselves in… I'm still glad we're friends. Whether or not our future will lead us down separate paths in time, that's just honestly how I feel."

Anti-Cosmo hesitated in shock. He had no idea if he was incredibly happy to hear that, or what it meant when his beating heart lifted high into his throat, but as his face had suddenly filled with a bright reddened colour, Anti-Cosmo reluctantly admitted to her in a stammer,

"Yeah… alright, I'm not… well, what I mean to say is… I don't think badly of your company here with me. So… the feeling is mutual."

Again, the air was insanely hot between them as Anti-Cosmo found himself breaking down his guard around her. It was simply baffling how Anti-Wanda alone was able to do this, and he had never met anyone other than her able to do this. And as she smiled sweetly in response, Anti-Cosmo curiously traced the gentle curve of her lips as they moved over her crooked teeth. He took note of the carefree way she would softly laugh, as if she had a naturally free-spirited personality brought on after years of love and laughter in her life. And her eyes remained warm and welcoming, with a blazing wall of fire that kept him at arm's length.

Anti-Cosmo wondered how she was able to seem so warm-hearted and friendly, and yet so guarded and distant at the same time. Anti-Cosmo wondered again… just who was this woman… and why she was able to fall so easily into his life…

"Hey, I forgot to mention! The courtyard is having a special on curry stands today! Let's go check it out, I'm starving!" Anti-Wanda suddenly called out to him, and before he could even interject, Anti-Wanda quickly caught a hold of his collar and dragged him at full force towards the exit.

Anti-Cosmo shouted in surprise as he suddenly found himself being pulled out of the studio, and he quickly barrelled down the winding stairway of the tower with Anti-Wanda eagerly leading the way. And, even more curiously, Anti-Cosmo couldn't find it within him to stop her at any point. He surprised himself as he had let her drag her along to wherever she wanted, and he gazed curiously ahead to spot her carefree smile widen across her face once again.

The heaviness in his chest returned and promptly pushed down on his heart without a second thought.

When they finally arrived at the courtyard, Anti-Wanda gently released his collar from her tight grip and turned to him with sparkling anticipation glistening in her eyes. Anti-Cosmo flinched in response as he felt his head heat up into a hurried flush, and he watched her cautiously as she ran across the courtyard to the nearest curry stand ahead of them. Hesitantly, Anti-Cosmo followed behind as he tried to catch up his calculating thoughts to the situation. Anti-Wanda had so easily clouded his world, and it was becoming all the more difficult to keep up with her.

"Oh man, this curry is my absolute favourite!" Anti-Wanda called to him as he finally managed to catch up with her beside a curry stand filled with steaming trays of food. She held a fork to her chin as she glowed in total happiness, before she dipped it back into a tray of creamy curry to pick out a piece of chicken lathered in spicy sauce, "Anti-Cosmo, you have to try this! It's called chicken tikka masala, and it's just… oh wow, it just tastes amazing! Try it!"

"It doesn't take much to perk your spirits back up, does it?" Anti-Cosmo told her as he arched an eyebrow at her. Then, as he peered at the steaming chicken below him, his stomach suddenly cried out in hunger pains as the overwhelming smell of cooked food overcame his good senses. He sighed as he gave in, and nodded to Anti-Wanda, "Alright, if it's really that amazing then I suppose I'll give it a try…"

Before Anti-Cosmo could say anything else, Anti-Wanda quickly rammed the fork towards his parted lips and pushed the chicken into his mouth. Anti-Cosmo almost cried out in surprise when he suddenly tasted an onslaught of delicious flavours attack his tongue.

"Wow… y'know, I thought you were just exaggerating, but this is a really good dish!" Anti-Cosmo's eyes widened as he savoured every second before swallowing the entire chicken whole, and the creamy masala sauce left behind a pleasantly hot aftertaste that cried out for more. Immediately, Anti-Cosmo snatched the fork away from her and dug into the tray beside him, and barrelled another mouthful of curry into his mouth.

"I'm glad you're enjoying it!" She laughed in surprise as she looked at her sudden empty hand, and then she leant to one side as she rubbed her knuckles on her clothes in a cocky manner, "You know I'm not one to brag, but I like to think of myself as a _connoisseur_ of all types of food. So when I say you should try a favourite dish of mine, then by all means, you have to try it!"

"I'll keep that in mind." Anti-Cosmo told her with a genuine grin and a face full of curry.

Anti-Wanda laughed again as she saw the light fill up in Anti-Cosmo's eyes as he enjoyed every slither of curry that entered his mouth, and she caught his interest away from it for a moment as she rested an idle hand against his shoulder to smile gently at him. Anti-Cosmo blinked in awe of her as she softly told him with genuine sincerity,

"It's nice to see you enjoying yourself. You're always so serious around me, so it's a nice change to see you smile like this. You, um, you look good when you smile."

Anti-Cosmo almost choked on a piece of chicken as he suddenly caught it in his throat.

As he felt his heart quickly jump erratically in his chest, his entire face flushed into a bright red colour as Anti-Wanda's words slowly began to sink in. The hot air had followed them both as their faces had filled up into a distinctive blush the moment their eyes had been locked into an awe-stricken gaze. The moment dragged on as the heaviness returned with full force, and they both felt a physical pull between them as they continued to keep each other in their sights. The moment was indescribable, and it was exhilarating. Anti-Cosmo was sure that his heart was on the verge of stopping all together. And Anti-Wanda dared to step closer towards him, before she spoke up gently and quietly from her sudden bashful nature,

"I know you're enjoying that curry, but try not to eat it all, okay? You're demolishing the entire tray! So… could you, um… spare a piece for me?"

As she shyly pointed towards the fork in his hand, Anti-Cosmo finally caught on to her hints as she had slowly closed her eyes and parted her lips in anticipation. Anti-Cosmo felt as if his heart had definitely stopped this time.

Then, it was as if his mind had switched on to automatic pilot as he absent-mindedly dipped the fork into the tray of curry and picked out a small piece of chicken dripping with steaming sauce. And carefully, he brought the fork slowly to her lips, and gently passed the piece into her mouth as she delicately wrapped her mouth around it. When Anti-Cosmo slid the fork out and as Anti-Wanda caught the chicken between her teeth, Anti-Cosmo felt as if his heart was about to burst out of his chest as he heard Anti-Wanda quietly and softly moan in absolute pleasure.

Now he fully understood why couples would often publically feed each other in this way.

Anti-Cosmo dropped the fork back into the tray as he tried his best to regain himself. He had no idea that such a small gesture would have been so intimate, and the impact had hit him so hard that he had to hold on to the side of the curry stand to keep himself upright. He ran an exhausted hand over his face as he internally told himself to keep himself together, and met up with Anti-Wanda's gaze once again as he spied just how red her face had become as well.

She must have noticed just how intense the moment was too.

"Ah, there's my two shining stars now! No doubt cooling down from an intensive period of learning, I assume!" Anti-Guy's voice suddenly called from afar, and the couple almost jumped out of their skins in surprise.

As they turned their heads towards him, Anti-Cosmo scowled immediately as he saw Anti-Guy's sly grin frozen on his face as if he had actively practiced to appear harmless and friendly on the outside. Anti-Cosmo knew him well enough to know that there was much more to this teacher than he lead on. And Anti-Cosmo felt all the more aggravated as he spotted Anti-Wanda in the corner of his eye with a larger smile on her face. She wasn't afraid to show how happy she was to see their teacher…

"So, students, might I ask why you're both here instead of residing in your respective studio that this academy has so benevolently lent to you?" Anti-Guy asked them cheerfully as his strained smile tugged at the corners in a seemingly painful way.

"Sorry, Anti-Guy. It was my idea to bring Anti-Cosmo here on our break." Anti-Wanda told him nonchalantly with a light-hearted grin, before she ducked her head bashfully as she openly admitted, "And, well, you know me! When I smell food, I just can't help myself."

"I know you all too well, Anti-Wanda. Trust me, I do." Anti-Guy told her sincerely, and Anti-Cosmo's piercing eyes flickered at him suspiciously. He took note of the odd way that Anti-Guy had phrased that, he noticed the way his tone of voice had wavered from condescending to caring in an instant, and he paid close attention to the way he would gaze down at Anti-Wanda with careful anticipation. It was as if he was on edge just to be around her.

Anti-Cosmo glowered at him all the more as Anti-Guy rested his hand on Anti-Wanda's shoulder and turned to him with a less-than-innocent grin perking up his expression.

"If you'll permit me, I must ask that you spare us a moment to speak privately… so, Anti-Cosmo, if you'll excuse us…"

Then, as if by command, Anti-Wanda walked across the courtyard with Anti-Guy's firm grip placed around her shoulder and he lead her away to a quietened area of the grounds. Anti-Cosmo was almost staring into space in shock as the moment had moved too quickly to even process, until it finally sank in that Anti-Wanda had left him stranded without a second thought. He recalled the cold way Anti-Wanda had simply walked away with Anti-Guy lingering on her side, and Anti-Cosmo knew… her attention was immediately grabbed by Anti-Guy by a simple gesture.

As Anti-Cosmo squinted his eyes from across the courtyard, he could make out the widened smile on Anti-Wanda's face, and he noticed how the redness of her blush had remained prominent all the time that she spent talking with him. He noticed how she would become happy and talkative one minute, and quickly afterwards become shy and modest in the next minute. Anti-Guy and Anti-Wanda had a close relationship, he reluctantly noted…

And it tore him up when he knew he couldn't object. Anti-Guy was his teacher, after all, and he couldn't jeopardise his diploma by coming between them. Anti-Cosmo wanted to brush this aside, he wanted to feel as if their closeness hadn't bothered him one bit… but he knew that in his heart of hearts, he cared immensely.

Anti-Guy had won this time. And Anti-Cosmo was not pleased at all.

"Hey, Anti-Cosmo! Wow, that's twice now I've seen you out of your studio for lunch." Anti-Jorgen suddenly called from afar. Anti-Cosmo made no movement to greet him as he joined him over at the curry stand, and Anti-Jorgen grinned humorously as Anti-Cosmo continued to ignore him, "So have you finally given up hiding from the rest of society to merge with the lowly anti-fairy crowd? I'm honoured that you've decided to grace us with your princely presence! I'll try not to look you directly in the eyes, as I'm sure we're not worthy enough to do so, and I'll be careful to lay out the red carpet for you…"

"Shut up the hell up already, I'm_ really_ not in the mood right now!" Anti-Cosmo snarled through his gritted teeth, and Anti-Jorgen jumped back slightly as he finally noticed the furious heat radiating from Anti-Cosmo's angered state.

"Yeesh, sorry. I didn't realise I came at a bad time." Anti-Jorgen followed Anti-Cosmo's infuriated gaze until he finally spotted Anti-Wanda with Anti-Guy in the distance. He watched her laugh whole-heartedly and Anti-Guy smile contently in response, and noticed how Anti-Cosmo's hands curled into clenched fists by his side, then dared to comment, "So what's got you so hot under the collar, huh?"

"Nothing, I'm fine!" Anti-Cosmo angrily told him as his harsh tone of voice contradicted him, "And it's nothing for you to be concerned with!"

"Alright, alright." Anti-Jorgen shrank into himself as his nerves got the better him as he continued to speak, despite his better judgement to keep quiet, "I don't really know what's eating you… but there doesn't seem to be anything worth getting upset about here. And isn't that Anti-Wanda over there speaking to Anti-Guy? Doesn't seem like there's anything bad going on there. In fact they look like they're really enjoying themselves…"

Suddenly, without warning, Anti-Cosmo slammed his fist against the curry stand table top, and Anti-Jorgen shouted out in fright as he jumped back with a hard gulp. The full force of Anti-Cosmo's fist had created a terrifyingly loud echo around the courtyard as a small cracked crater formed on the table top. The frightening silence that followed afterwards built Anti-Jorgen into a cold sweat as Anti-Cosmo turned over to glare at him with fury blazing in his eyes.

But in the end, Anti-Cosmo turned back to stride away from Anti-Jorgen, and he hung his head in anger as he promptly left the courtyard. Anti-Jorgen didn't call after him, as he was afraid of what might happen to him if he were to say anything else to him, and simply remained frozen in fear beside the steaming remains of the curry left in the tray.

And as Anti-Cosmo turned the corner into the interior of the academy, Anti-Wanda had peered over Anti-Guy's shoulder as her smile finally faded away, and cautiously watched Anti-Cosmo disappear from her sight.

…

The studio was alive with noise and metallic whirring as Anti-Cosmo furiously worked ahead with his machine. He decided to try it out and turn it on, as his anger had prompted him to cause some kind of damage and destruction to something. But at that stage, the machine only barely spluttered to life and emitted thick fogs of black smoke that had risen to the ceiling. The machine suddenly began to heat up as the underdeveloped mechanisms were working into overdrive, and Anti-Cosmo quickly removed his jacket to beat down the fire before he switched the machine off completely.

The machine cooled down and the smoke faded away, then Anti-Cosmo fell from his feet as he collapsed back against his stool in a heavy slump. He looked hopelessly towards his incomplete device from a distance and noticed how it had been dirtied with smoke. The dust had overlapped the broken areas and his blackened jacket slung over the side like a coat hanger. It looked like a shattered mess.

Anti-Cosmo ran his hand through his messy hair and sighed. His sleeves had rolled up to his forearms and his shirt button popped open at the top to release the hot air from under his clothes, then he looked vacantly at the smoky ceiling and lamented on the events of the day. He couldn't let Anti-Wanda distract him anymore, he couldn't let his wavering thoughts drag him away from what he wanted to do… but the more he thought about her and her peculiar ways… he knew that it was almost impossible now.

As his conflicting feelings ground him to a halt, the only constant that infuriated him was his hatred for his teacher… _Anti-Guy. _He was a patronising creep, and he seemed to get on too well with the girl that had captured his world… and as he recalled just how the two had acted in front of him, Anti-Cosmo felt his fury rise from within his stomach. He reluctantly remembered the happy way Anti-Wanda would talk with him, and as Anti-Guy had lavished her with attention, Anti-Wanda became introverted, as if she was largely affected by him…

Anti-Cosmo growled to himself at the thought. And yet he couldn't quite understand why he was so overwhelmed by Anti-Wanda's cheerful smile, and why he couldn't stand the thought of her sharing that smile with their teacher. He couldn't place where his hatred truly came from, but he knew for a fact that his gut instinct told him with full force that Anti-Guy is not to be trusted… especially around Anti-Wanda.

And finally, as if she had been summoned, Anti-Wanda returned to the studio with a wary expression painted across her face. She pushed the entrance door open and walked inside in search for Anti-Cosmo. She curiously looked over the lingering clouds of smoke above her head as she smelt burning metal overtake her senses. Then, when she found Anti-Cosmo bent forward on his stool, he peered over to her in return, and arched an eyebrow at her as he wondered why her face was already flushing with an abundance of colour.

Unbeknownst to him, Anti-Wanda was caught off guard by how he looked. Anti-Cosmo bent forward with his hand rested against his forehead, and his unkempt hair fell to the side as wayward strands stuck to his face from perspiration. His shirt had been rolled past his elbows to reveal the accentuated muscle on his skin, and his neck and collarbone became more prominently slender as his shirt had become undone from the top. Then his dark eyes captured her gaze as the remnants of his anger flared from within them. He was so sure that he looked like a mess after his intensive working session, but Anti-Wanda bit her bottom lip as she withheld her comments to say otherwise…

"Um, sorry… I got held up for… a while… lost track of time…" Anti-Wanda attempted to speak through her muddled thoughts as Anti-Cosmo ran his hand through his messy hair again, and she couldn't find the right words as she was too caught up in the ethereal sight of him.

"Yes, well, while you were having fun with that… _teacher_ of ours…" Anti-Cosmo had to physically restrain himself from insulting him, "I've been busy trying to catch up on the work I've missed. You know, if you hadn't dragged me away from my work, I would've been halfway done by now."

"Hey, I didn't hear any complaints when you had a face full of curry." She playfully teased to lighten the mood and waved a dismissive hand at him.

Then, whilst she tried to keep her eyes away from him, Anti-Cosmo quickly rose from his stool to lean his hand against the desk, and he stared at her until she was forced to look over his way once more. She gulped hard when she finally locked on to him again, and cautiously watched as Anti-Cosmo silently gestured to her to come over with his fingers.

And by command, Anti-Wanda slowly stepped through the studio to stand on the other side of the desk in order to keep her distance, and to avoid looking anywhere other than his darkened eyes. His monocle had fallen away somewhere and she could finally see the full intensity that he withheld in his hardened stare.

"I have a job for you to do." He told her bluntly. Then Anti-Wanda almost gasped in excitement.

"You do?!"

"Sit yourself down and I'll show you."

As quickly as she could, Anti-Wanda eagerly collapsed against the stool and looked back up at him with enthusiasm sparkling in her rose-coloured irises. Anti-Cosmo had to clear his throat before he could lean over her, and glide his fingers over the desk towards her notebook.

"I want you to make a note of all the chemicals in my arsenal and keep track of everything I use. It's your responsibility to keep the stock full, and it's your job to replace or refill anything when we're in need of something. You think you can do that for me?"

"Sure thing. Write down numbers and keep track of the stock… sounds easy enough!" Anti-Wanda said cheerfully as she grabbed a hold of her notepad and pencil in preparation. Then, Anti-Cosmo halted her once more as he pushed down on her notepad for a moment, and grinned sarcastically as he couldn't help commenting,

"It does sound easy… but when it comes to you, Anti-Wanda, I fear that anything is possible."

"Y'know, for argument's sake, I'm going to take that as a good thing." She pouted and shrugged him off as Anti-Cosmo laughed darkly in reply.

For a while, the couple had worked in silence in their own respective worlds. Only once or twice would they peer over their shoulders at their work partners and watch how they were doing. Whenever Anti-Wanda glanced back at Anti-Cosmo, she noticed how passionate he was about fixing his earthquake device in a professional and speedy manner. He'd wipe away the sweat that dripped from his temples with his bare forearm and clean his dirtied face with the hem of his unbuttoned shirt, then his focused stare would return to his work in a timely fashion. She silently admired his determination to put in the effort in his work.

And when Anti-Cosmo found his thoughts wandering away from his work, he would glance over towards Anti-Wanda casually sitting behind him. She was a poor student, and once or twice he caught her head nodding in and out of unconsciousness as she fought the urge to fall asleep. He shook his head as he knew that Anti-Wanda would be an entirely new challenge for him in the coming future. And yet, she would be an interesting one…

Time passed on as the sun was sinking beneath the clouds in the sky, and they were near the end of their session. Anti-Cosmo stepped back from his work and admired all that he had done that day. There was a clear difference in his progress, and he grinned to himself as he revelled in his own genius. It was a successfully productive day with Anti-Wanda silently keeping to herself behind him. And when he turned over his shoulder to congratulate them both on a successful day of work, Anti-Cosmo's eyes suddenly widened in shock as he found Anti-Wanda's hands and arms covered in a bright array of glistening coloured chemicals.

"Anti-Wanda… what are you…"

"I wondered when you'd notice!" Anti-Wanda cheerfully called over to him as she turned over his way. Anti-Cosmo stifled a gasp as he saw how her face had been dirtied with specks of wayward chemicals that had clung to her ocean-coloured skin.

"Have you been… experimenting?" Anti-Cosmo asked her incredulously as he looked over the vials of liquids and chemicals that had splayed over the desk. And beside her were pages and pages of scribblings in her notebook detailing all the mixtures she had made that day. Anti-Cosmo was astounded by the amount of coherent notes she was able to make.

"Would you believe that the only class I've never failed was alchemy?" Anti-Wanda laughed whole-heartedly as she held a flask of active mixtures to the air, and carefully balanced it in the air as she added one more drop of liquid to the mix, "I told you that I'm like a connoisseur when it comes to food, and this is almost exactly like cooking to me! See? This potion I just made smells like cinnamon!"

As the umber smoke lifted to the air, Anti-Cosmo could definitely pick up the distinctive smell of cinnamon in the air. And he was instantly awe-struck with a sudden realisation.

"This is excellent, Anti-Wanda! We've found your niche!" He told her enthusiastically as she stared back in surprise, "Don't you see? Cooking and alchemy is your greatest strength, and I know a million and one ways how that could be useful to me! Oh, this is brilliant, Anti-Wanda! I knew there was something truly special about you…"

"You did?" Anti-Wanda breathed out incredulously as a widened genuine smile spread across her face, and Anti-Cosmo was too alive with ideas to take note of how beautiful she looked covered in multi-coloured chemicals.

"Well done, Anti-Wanda! Colour me impressed. And from the looks of things, you've done some very good work here… yeah, I could use some of these experiments in my future projects, these are just perfect for my regime into world domination…" Anti-Cosmo scanned through her notepad as Anti-Wanda glowed with happiness by his side, "This is quite honestly extraordinary work. You've shown me your calling at last, and I'm truly grateful."

Anti-Wanda's face was lit up into a bright red lantern as she bashfully tucked a tuft of curly ocean hair behind her ears, and her voice almost cracked as her relief was insurmountable,

"I'm… so glad that I'm able to help…"

"You've been excellent, Anti-Wanda. Never doubt your skills now, this is more than I ever expected from you." Anti-Cosmo squared his eyes at her as he lowered himself to her level, and her eyes widened in utter surprise when he firmly took hold of her shoulders, "All this time, I knew there was a purpose for having you around here. It frustrated me to no end as I tried my hardest to find out what that purpose was. I knew I wanted you around… I just couldn't get you out of my mind for a second… I knew there was a reason why I wanted you to stay with me…"

"Is… is that right?" Anti-Wanda nervously asked as her blush deepened and as Anti-Cosmo's tone of voice trailed off into his wandering thoughts once again.

"You have no idea what it's been like in the past few days. I've been distracted by you, I've been frustrated by you, and I've been… simply _enthralled_ by the way you work! You're like this rare anomaly baring the sole purpose of challenging everything I've ever known… and all you had to do was exist."

"I had no idea..." Anti-Wanda breathed out slowly as her entire face had heated up, "I was so worried about how I'd only drag you down because of how useless I am, when all this time… I had no idea… I affected you this much…"

"You're not useless. Don't ever think that." Anti-Cosmo told her sincerely as he leant closer to her to affirm his statement, and Anti-Wanda swallowed hard, "Everyone has the power to really excel at something. Everyone carries a small spark of talent. It just takes time to find it. And it takes times to strengthen it. All this time, without even knowing it, I've been able to see that spark within you. And I'll help you, Anti-Wanda. I'll help hone your skills into something great, into something ethereal… into something no one has ever seen before! You can count on it."

Anti-Wanda was almost moved to tears as her hands quickly flew to her mouth to hide her shaky smile, and her watery eyes blinked away the glistening tears forming in her eyes. Anti-Cosmo laughed softly at her reaction and felt his heart lifting in his chest. Then his fanged smirk became gentle. The sharpness in his voice suddenly disappeared, and instead, he sounded sincerely compassionate, as if he spoke straight from his heart,

"It'll be a pleasure shaping you into the extraordinary anti-fairy I know you will become."

Anti-Wanda breathed out slowly one final time as she rubbed her chemical sodden fingers across the corners of her eyes. And as the brightly coloured chemicals that clung to her skin lit up along with her smile, she softly replied with a happy sigh,

"Thank you… Anti-Cosmo, really... thank you so much…"

…

…

The long day had finally almost drawn to a close. Anti-Cosmo pushed through the front door of his dormitory to fall into the hallway, and he couldn't stop himself from subconsciously smiling. All the way home, he had a smile on his face as a result of a good productive day. And it didn't occur to him for a second if there was a second reason for his cheerful mood. He remained simply oblivious. His world had been clouded over once again, and all traces of calculating thoughts had been wiped clean, all because of one particular person...

But before he could even kick off his shoes, he was immediately confronted by Anti-Cupid who had stormed down the hall with his infuriated glare locked on to him. Anti-Cosmo was quickly on his guard as he was practically pushed against the front door and cornered by Anti-Cupid. Their faces were dangerously close as Anti-Cupid leant his hand against the doorframe to intimidate him, but Anti-Cosmo rolled his eyes as he failed to seem threatening at all.

"Something is off about you recently, Anti-Cosmo." He accused him with a cold stare, and Anti-Cosmo simply shrugged.

"I don't know what you're talking about." He feigned innocence as he forcefully stepped away from him, "Besides, since when have you ever been concerned with my well-being? I should really comment on how odd _you're_ behaving recently, to be quite honest. But I suppose violent mood swings are expected from a goth…"

"Don't even try to turn this around on me, I won't fall for that old technique. I've known you too long to know when you're purposely avoiding the subject." Anti-Cupid stepped in front of him again, squared his eyes at Anti-Cosmo as he was determined to keep him within his sights, then his lowered voice became more aggressive, "And I've known you long enough to know when there's something going on with you. It's too obvious to ignore at this point."

"You're delusional." Anti-Cosmo shoved him away as he snarled in annoyance and he turned his head away as if he couldn't waste his time looking at him anymore, "Either this is a manic episode of extreme paranoia or you've been reading too much depressing Edgar Allan Poe fiction… either way you need to get your head together _and fast!_ Keep me well out of the way of your pathetic gothic tendencies. It's becoming too tiring to tolerate any longer…"

"Anti-Jorgen told me about what happened at lunch today."

Suddenly, Anti-Cosmo's head snapped up. Then, he gradually turned his gaze back to Anti-Cupid as his widened eyes finally met up with his. Anti-Cupid fought to urge to smirk as he proudly stated,

"That caught your attention, didn't it?"

Anti-Cosmo shook his head as he regained his composure, and fought away his wavering thoughts as he quickly turned himself way from Anti-Cupid once again.

"No… now I really don't know what you're talking about." Anti-Cosmo tried to sound genuinely honest, but his quietened voice wasn't hard enough for Anti-Cupid to buy it.

"Bullshit. I know something happened at lunch that made you angry. You were angry enough to destroy part of a curry stand, from what I've heard." Anti-Cupid squinted his eyes as his suspicion grew all the more, "And I know it had something to do with that studio partner of yours… Anti-Wanda."

The moment that name was heard and echoed throughout the dormitory hallway, Anti-Cosmo quickly stepped towards Anti-Cupid and Anti-Cosmo almost head-butted him by how close he had approached him. Anti-Cosmo snarled through his gritted teeth,

"I fail to see how any of this is your business."

"If you get any further involved with this woman, then this is entirely my business." Anti-Cupid refused to be intimidated as he pointed a finger to his chest, and a vein was seen almost pulsating on his forehead as he growled in anger, "Remember this well, Anti-Cosmo. No matter how strong or powerful you think you are, no matter how you regard our own personal relationship… you're aware of my responsibilities as the god against mindless infatuation… and I assure you that you will be _no_ obstacle in my mission. Let this be your first warning."

"Christ, are you serious? Do you hear yourself when you speak? I mean, do you _really_ listen?" Anti-Cosmo spluttered as he tried to disregard his unwarranted uneasy feelings, and when he gradually stormed away, Anti-Cosmo knocked him aside with his shoulder and left him with unsteady parting words, "There's nothing going on between us. Anti-Wanda… she's… not something you should be concerned with! You better leave this alone if you value your life."

Anti-Cupid simply crossed his arms over his chest and sighed hopelessly as he finally called after him,

"Same to you, my friend. Same to you."

Anti-Cosmo strode in long steps down the hallway until he reached the door to his bedroom. He slammed it shut after he stepped inside, and for a minute, he lingered in the middle of the room as the reality of the situation began to sink in.

Anti-Cosmo's face was red all over. His blush had been growing the more he spoke of Anti-Wanda, and the more he thought of her. Nothing had provoked this reaction, nothing had warranted this unusual behaviour, but he found himself silently filling his face with rushes of heated colour with no explanation why. Slowly, he brought his hand over his mouth as he felt the warmth of his face sting his fingertips, and his vacant eyes stared at the floor in shock and awe.

The mental image of Anti-Wanda had not disappeared in the slightest. He remembered the crystal clear view of her covered in multi-coloured chemicals that glistened with magical components smeared over her ocean-coloured skin. He remembered the mess of her unkempt curly hair sticking out in all directions in all ends. He remembered her toothy grin and her watery gaze, the fresh tears that had been quickly wiped away, and the goofy laugh she often made as if she hadn't a care in the world.

She was by no means exceedingly pretty. But she had lots of character. She was big-hearted and simple-minded, and her character… was beautiful.

_Have I really just figured out what makes her right for my regime, or is this the tip of the iceberg? How many layers are there to this mysteriously enthralling woman?_

Anti-Cosmo slowly shook his head as he began to realise the true extent of his fascination with her.

_I think… I think there's something more… so much more…_

As Anti-Cosmo reluctantly held on to the image fresh of her fiery eyes in his mind, and as his own eyes softened the more he thought, he silently wondered to himself…

_Anti-Wanda… there's something else… something that I feel… and something that you are…_

_...so what are you to me?_

…

…

…

_Chapter Three End. Chapter four is on the way…_

**Thanks for reading! Merry Christmas, and have a happy new year!**


	4. Puzzed And Amused

Chapter Four :: _Puzzled and Amused_

…

The next morning fell on Anti-Fairy Academy, and it was another day of ordinary stormy weather that once again graced the grounds of Anti-Fairy World. The blood-soaked clouds drenched the plains in the intimidating light, and Anti-Cosmo sighed to himself as he aimlessly walked the paths of the academy gardens.

He felt strange all morning. Something within him had shifted, and the entire world seemed to look different in his eyes. He couldn't place this unknown feeling that resided deep within the pits of his chest, and it plagued every part of him as he absent-mindedly walked along the empty terrain that led up to the entrance of the academy. Although it seemed as if the ground beneath him had fallen away into nothingness as he delved further into his calculating mind, his eyes eventually glazed over into a dreamy state. At that point, he might as well have been walking on thin air.

His vacant gaze wandered towards the sky until he spied the tall tower that soared above the clouds ahead of him. He recognised the curve of the stones that spiralled upwards into the sky, and he knew this was his studio, his home, and his sanctuary away from the rest of the world.

Away from everyone… _except her._

"Anti-Cosmo!"

He could have sworn he heard her voice echo across the grounds to call his name, but he promptly shrugged his shaken thoughts away. He absolutely refused to live through another exhausting day of battling his internal torment with nothing but thoughts of her spreading like a virus through every inch of him. And just as he was certain he had calmed down and collected himself, he recognised the sound of fast-paced tapping on the cemented ground behind him, and he nervously noticed how the sound was quickly drawing nearer and nearer.

He turned over his shoulder, and he was stunned into silence when he saw Anti-Wanda hurriedly running towards him from across the way.

"Anti-Cosmo! Hey… wait up!"

From the sight of her heavy breathing, it seemed as if she had been running for miles. And yet her laughter was just as big as her smile as she madly waved over to him in a desperate attempt to catch his attention.

_You have my attention, alright…_

She was only a couple strides away from him when she suddenly tripped over her own feet, shouted in surprise, and landed face first on the ground in front of him. For a few seconds, she remained frozen on the ground as the situation of what had just happened slowly dawned on her. And Anti-Cosmo was unamused as he sighed and wondered why he was so affected by a girl as clumsy as her. She was too careless and dopey, so why was someone like this able to capture his interest so much?

Then, almost as if to answer the question, Anti-Wanda picked herself up from the ground with loud laughter and a hopeless grin spread across her reddened face,

"Haha… um, I guess I got a little too excited about seeing you…"

A flush hurriedly flourished along Anti-Cosmo's face. She was certainly quick to remind him of the answer. It was because of her boundless warmth, her welcoming nature, and her carefree attitude on life that allowed her to stride forward despite her shortcomings… she was unlike any other anti-fairy he had ever met. She was an incredible rarity. And simply by looking at her then, Anti-Cosmo could feel his mind cloud over… and his uncertainties melt away… until there was only her…

_Only her… all that matters is only her…_

Anti-Cosmo suddenly winced when he quickly heard the sharp rustle of leaves in the distance, and he was right in his suspicions when he spotted a figure stealthily hidden behind a tall array of shrubs across the gardens. And as Anti-Cosmo squinted his eyes, he recognised the silhouette of the figure in an instant.

_Anti-Cupid…_ he was glaring directly back at Anti-Cosmo as he noticed Anti-Cosmo had absent-mindedly reached out his hand to help Anti-Wanda get back on her feet.

Before he could think to react, Anti-Wanda gently slid her slender fingers across his palm and took a firm grasp of his hand. Anti-Cosmo felt as if his hand was burning from the sudden contact, and he felt his heart hit increasingly hard against his chest as she stumbled closer towards him on to her feet. She locked him into her gaze as she wobbled unsteadily before him, and Anti-Cosmo's mind was once more caught in a fog.

But Anti-Cupid's piercing scowl that bore a sharp hole into Anti-Cosmo's head reminded him that this was dangerous territory. All of his senses began to scream at him to let go of her, to stop staring in mindless awe of her, and to keep a distance before Anti-Cupid's suspicions were peaked even more. Anti-Cosmo pressed his lips together in a tightly thin line as he found himself reluctant to pull away from her, especially as he found her fingers fit so perfectly in his grasp… he winced his eyes again as he fought to control himself.

_This looks bad… I need to get away from her, and quickly…_

Awkwardly, Anti-Cosmo stumbled backwards on his feet as he jerked his hand away from hers, and his blush deepened all the more as he tried to regain his composure. Anti-Wanda cocked her head to the side in wonder at his strange behaviour as he suddenly turned away from her, and she hadn't a clue that this was Anti-Cosmo's desperately subtle attempt to hide his burning hot face. He could feel the heat radiating on his fingertips as he brought his hand to his mouth to clear his throat. His mouth was dry, his face was on fire, and it felt as if his heartbeat was reaching maximum velocity.

Suddenly, his heart plummeted to the deep depths of his stomach as he turned to find another figure approaching them from nearby. And Anti-Cosmo felt his teeth grind together at the distasteful sight of him.

"_Mi amor, _Anti-Wanda, I have been looking for you all morning." Anti-Juandissimo called to her and walked by Anti-Cosmo as if he hadn't even noticed him standing by, "I went to your dormitory this morning, but you were not there! I told you last night that I would walk you to the academy today, did I not? Did you forget my promise to you, _mi querida?_"

"I didn't forget." Anti-Wanda told him coldly and quickly brushed him aside.

Anti-Cosmo's ears twitched in interest as he caught on to this. Anti-Wanda walked straight past Anti-Juandissimo with her chin lifted to the sky and a less than pleased expression on her face. She was deliberately giving Anti-Juandissimo the cold shoulder, and Anti-Cosmo fought the urge to smirk. Then his eyebrows rose in surprise as he wondered why...

"Oh Anti-Wanda, _lo siento! Lo siento, mi amor!" _Anti-Juandissimo suddenly reached out and caught her hand in his before she could walk away from him, and she reluctantly turned his way with a look of despair stricken on her face, "I'm sorry for last night, Anti-Wanda, I'm so sorry. I never want to hurt you! Please, don't be angry with me…"

"But I'm tired, Anti-Juandissimo. I'm tired of seeing you shrink away like a little mouse who refuses to fight back! Why don't you ever fight for me, huh? Why do you never stand up for me when I need you?" Anti-Wanda angrily pushed his hand away from hers as she crossed her arms over her chest and furiously glared back at him, "I'm tired of being put in second place with you. So I've decided… enough is enough. Why should I put any more effort into us when you don't put any effort in at all? You just… you don't seem like you care about me at all…"

Just as Anti-Wanda finished, Anti-Juandissimo suddenly fell to his knees in a collapsed heap, and the bystanders watched in complete shock as Anti-Juandissimo clasped his hands together and desperately shuffled towards Anti-Wanda to openly beg her,

"I do care, Anti-Wanda, I do! You know me, I am an absolute mess without you! You are right, I am a scared little mouse, but you give me the strength that I need to become less cowardly. It might not seem like it, especially after that terrible mistake I made last night, but I am working on it! I just… I cannot do it without you. Anti-Wanda… oh, _mi fuerza… lo siento… lo siento, mi amor… te amo… te amo, _Anti-Wanda…"

Anti-Juandissimo audibly sobbed with dry tears as he shuffled to Anti-Wanda's side to clutch on to the hem of her shirt. He buried his face against her hip and Anti-Wanda tried her best to look as if this wasn't bothering her… but her uncomfortable expression completely contradicted this. She trembled as she tried her hardest to resist, but the more Anti-Juandissimo declared his love for her in his broken state, the less she could hold up her guard. Anti-Wanda finally sighed and turned to him to hesitantly take a hold of his arms.

"Oh… stop that, will you? You're… causing a scene down there."

Anti-Juandissimo sniffed and unattractively wiped his nose with his forearm. Then as Anti-Wanda helped him up to his feet, she loosely held on to his arms as she looked at his large watery eyes, and sighed once again as she seemed reluctant to give in like this.

"I forgive you this one time, okay? After this, I hope you will grow a backbone and treat me better. My patience is wearing thin…"

"I am a changed man, Anti-Wanda. Believe me, I have learned from my mistake, because I do not wish to lose you! _Te amo, mi princesa hermosa…_"

Anti-Wanda finally managed to smile a little, and Anti-Juandissimo took this chance to fully embrace her in his arms. She shouted slightly in surprise when she suddenly found herself crushed beneath his eager embrace, until she laughed nervously as she loosely held on to his shoulders in return.

Anti-Cosmo, however, wished he had left long ago. He felt himself growing increasingly sick at the sight of the couple, and as his stomach turned over in disgust, he took this as a cue to leave immediately. Quickly, he turned on his heels and strode away with his clenched fists swinging robotically at his sides, and headed straight for the entrance of the academy. He knew he couldn't stay another minute near Anti-Wanda when she acted so close to Anti-Juandissimo, it was too sickly to look at. And he left without a word and a single glance back at them.

Anti-Cupid scowled at the couple in the distance as he shared Anti-Cosmo's distaste for the couple from afar. Although he hated them for a slightly different reason…

Meanwhile, Anti-Wanda only let herself feel limp in her boyfriend's grasp, and her small smile seemed strained as if she tried her best to appear happy and relieved. She couldn't help but feel an uneasy stab in her chest as she idly clutched Anti-Juandissimo's shoulders. Something about this felt wrong… something within her felt as if she was making a vital mistake… and as she tried to convince herself that she was only imagining things, and as she tried to tell herself that she was truly where she belonged… she couldn't help the swaying feeling in her heart that begged her to reconsider…

And she silently wondered… was this the right choice?

…

After that scene, Anti-Wanda soon found Anti-Cosmo lingering near the salad bar in the canteen with his careful eyes scanning the bowls of fruit laid out before him. It was strange, she found, that Anti-Cosmo's attentive stare bred an air of sophistication all around him. She wondered if he was aware of the impression he gave off simply by doing the most menial tasks. And as he idly picked up a red apple and held it in the air, Anti-Wanda was amused by the way he would slowly turn it around in his tight grasp to inspect every inch of the fruit. It was as if he was expecting to find a long lost Beethoven sonnet hidden deeply in the core.

Every other anti-fairy felt intimidated by how strong of an impression he emanated, whether it was intentional or not, but Anti-Wanda felt fearless as she walked in stride to his side. She even dared to pick the apple from his grasp and smiled teasingly up to him. When Anti-Cosmo saw her there all of a sudden with his apple in hand, he arched an eyebrow and spoke with a deadpan voice,

"You're not going to let me have a peaceful morning, are you?"

"Of course not, that would be too boring." She replied with a grin and heartily bit into the apple without a second thought. Anti-Cosmo scowled as his eyes rolled to the ceiling, then he was determined to be all the more stern with her,

"Hm. Boring or not, I hope you'll leave that attitude out of the studio today. It seems to me that drama follows you everywhere you go, and distractions will not benefit a healthy working environment. So I won't allow anymore disruptions from this point onwards. You understand?"

Anti-Wanda looked vacantly away from the apple hanging between her fingers, and a distant sorrow tinged her expression all of a sudden. She spoke quietly, as if she couldn't quite find her voice,

"Right… you're right. I'm sorry about what happened this morning. I didn't really intend on causing a scene, especially in front of you. I'll keep my relationship separated from my school work. You can trust me on that."

Anti-Cosmo cleared his throat once again as he hadn't intended on upsetting her. He couldn't bear to see her so troubled. Then, he froze up. As soon as he recognised the sharp stabs of unease suddenly strike at his heart, Anti-Cosmo turned away from her to avoid eye contact as he shouted unsteadily,

"Listen, I only meant that you keep your personal life away from your work, I didn't say that you should… ugh, look, do what you want, I don't care about what you do with your relationship! That's none of my business, and I'm really not interested anyway…"

The uncontrollable volume of his voice betrayed everything that he was saying, and Anti-Wanda laughed as she clearly picked up on that. No matter how much Anti-Cosmo tried to deny it, he couldn't seem to lie easily to her. She saw right through him, and Anti-Cosmo's self- confidence wavered once again. Anti-Wanda shrugged in reply,

"Well, when I explain why I was angry with Anti-Juandissimo, it might not seem all that interesting anyway." Anti-Wanda said with a small smile, then she leant against the side of the salad bar with a sigh as she rested her weight on one hip, with the half-eaten apple hanging idly in her other hand, "Last night started out to be a lot of fun. Anti-Juandissimo and I spent the night at the movies and eating the greasiest pizzas from the greasiest pizzeria joints in Anti-Fairy world. He was even kind enough to give me a ride home in his car to see me off, and I was sure it was going to be one of those nights you remember for years to come… but my roommates were hanging around outside my dormitory to smoke…"

Anti-Cosmo caught Anti-Wanda shiver with anger as her eyes glazed over with fury flaring in her rose-coloured irises.

"My roommates… they're not very nice at all. They like to pick on me a lot. It's not fun having to live with them, it's not fun at all." Her voice grew louder with annoyance as she tightly gripped on to her apple and clenched her fingers around the side of the salad bar, "As I walked by, my roommates were making very rude comments about me. I tried to stand up for myself, but I couldn't say anything… I just kind of… stood there. Like a scared little kid."

Anti-Wanda sighed as she recalled the painful moment in her mind, and her voice grew softer with sadness,

"But, y'know, I'm only one person. And there were three of them all making fun of me, I couldn't stand a chance by myself. So when I turned around to see if Anti-Juandissimo would come to help me, I saw him shrinking down into his car seat! What a cowardly little mouse… he'd rather let these girls rip me to shreds than interfere and stand up for me. He'll do anything to avoid confrontation. He's the kind of person who cares too much about what other people think of him, and it's becoming clear to me now that his desperate need for universal approval conflicts with being with someone like me. Anti-Cosmo, it's… it's really starting to wear me down..."

Anti-Cosmo felt his blood boil as he clearly imagined the scenario in his head, and how pathetic it must have been of Anti-Juandissimo to completely avoid entering the scene. And his anger rose all the more as he figured Anti-Wanda must have been distraught to see her boyfriend stand on the side-lines whilst she had to endure a verbal beat down. Anti-Cosmo felt no need to hold back the truth as he suddenly stepped closer to her, and his hardened eyes gazed at her with determination,

"He's nothing but a gutless coward who isn't worth the effort, Anti-Wanda. You said it yourself, if he's not putting in the effort to make this work then you should forget him. Put your hard work into someone who is willing to do the same for you…"

"You really think so?" Anti-Wanda asked, and her hips swung aside as she placed her weight on the other foot, then her lips curled into a playful smirk as she leant the apple against her mouth as if she went to kiss it, "Someone who is willing to do the same for me, huh? Do you have someone else in mind for me, then?"

Anti-Cosmo's head quickly burst into a fiery flush, as if steam had suddenly erupted out of his ears. His mouth hung open as he flustered to think what she was exactly implying… and if he was all that opposed to what she was implying.

_Wh-what are you saying? You mean… s-someone like… like me?_

Then, just before he could really put thought into his answer, Anti-Wanda rested her hands on her hips and laughed heartily aloud,

"I know exactly what you're thinking, Anti-Cosmo… you think that I'd be better suited with someone like Anti-Guy," she grinned knowingly as she saw Anti-Cosmo's agape mouth hang lower in complete dismay, "Hmm, well… Anti-Guy is confident, he's intelligent, and he's definitely got that hot teacher trope going on… but Anti-Guy is a little older than me. I just don't see how it would work out between us. Although I can see why you'd think we'd make a good match, I mean we do spend a lot of time together and we get along really well… but no, I don't see how we'd ever get together."

Anti-Cosmo could only stare at her in slack-jawed confusion. He couldn't even believe he was having this conversation with her.

And yet, he couldn't help the feeling of slight relief with her answer…

…

…

The working day was going by quicker than Anti-Cosmo had anticipated.

As he had occupied his morning with loudly wielding materials together, he occasionally put his soldering iron aside and pulled up his safety goggles to glance over to the far side of his studio. Then he would idly watch Anti-Wanda concentrate on her experiments. She had a particular way of working, Anti-Cosmo had noticed. As she inspected each potion, she held up the vial to the air so that the brightly coloured chemicals within the flasks could be clearly seen glistening behind the glass in the sunlight. Anti-Wanda's eyes would squint at it for a long time, the tip of her tongue would slightly peak through her lips, and when she knew she was on to something extraordinary, her crooked smile would widen across her face and she'd dive over her notes to scribble down her thoughts and ideas.

It was odd to see Anti-Wanda wrapped up in her own world. He felt strange as he noticed how he would glance over to her more and more as the time progressed onwards. Especially when Anti-Wanda would catch him in the act. Without any warning, Anti-Wanda would suddenly stop in the midst of her experimentation and glance over her shoulder towards him, and on instinct, Anti-Cosmo would drop his flustered gaze to the ground and quickly clutch on to the handle of his soldering iron, as if he hadn't been looking at her at all. And Anti-Wanda would watch how he worked in return.

This would repeat throughout the day. Anti-Cosmo's fixated stare would wander over to her, and he'd silently lose track of his thoughts as her simple presence was enough to distract him. He noticed the brightly coloured puffs of chemically induced smoke sprinkle through the air as she expertly mixed them together, and the small sparks of magical dust motes would rain down the rays of sunlight spilling through the cracks of the stained glass windows and reflect in her rose-coloured irises.

It was a beautiful display, and Anti-Wanda was at the centre of it all. Anti-Cosmo winced at an unknown pressure heavily pressing down on his heart.

"Hey Anti-Cosmo, do you have a minute?"

His back snapped upright the moment he heard her call to him.

"Sure, what is it?"

When Anti-Wanda didn't reply right away, Anti-Cosmo curiously glanced at her through the corners of his eyes as he refused to face away from his work. But he was all the more intrigued when Anti-Wanda had paused to hesitantly bite down on her full bottom lip.

"Well, I've been wanting to tell you this all day, but to tell you the truth… I've been too nervous to speak up, until now…"

Slowly, Anti-Cosmo turned away from his work to meet up with her uneasy gaze. She was fidgeting a lot. Anti-Wanda's hands ran through her ocean-coloured curls sitting over her shoulders and she twisted the loose strands around her slender fingers. Anti-Cosmo's eyes widened all the more as he grew all the more curious.

"There's no need to be afraid to speak your mind to me. In fact, I encourage it." Anti-Cosmo told her patiently, and smirked as the thought crossed his mind, "If you're able to speak up against someone as terrifying and prestigious as me, then you're stronger than most anti-fairies in this academy already."

Anti-Wanda giggled shyly, and her face flushed a little as she brushed her loose curls behind her ear. She took a moment to take a breath, before she looked back at Anti-Cosmo with a small smile lingering on her misshapen lips, and her voice had unexpectedly softened,

"Um… I want to thank you for listening to me earlier. I know you said that I should keep my private life separate from my work, but even so, I'm glad you lent an ear when I told you about what happened with Anti-Juandissimo. It… it really meant a lot to me that you were willing to hear me out…"

Anti-Cosmo blinked at her with a blank stare stricken over his face. He certainly didn't expect this kind of response, and for a moment, he was frozen in complete surprise. Anti-Cosmo quickly cleared his throat as he coughed into his hand, and averted his gaze away for a moment to regain his composure. But his voice was quiet when he replied,

"Really, now… it's nothing worth thanking me for…"

"That's not true, it's worth plenty!" Anti-Wanda protested loudly as she suddenly felt very emotional over this, and Anti-Cosmo almost jumped back by her reaction, "You might not understand it, but I really am grateful. My roommates… they're really horrible people. I put up with their comments every day, and I'm forced to endure it because my boyfriend refuses to step in and help me. I guess… I just need to hear that someone is on my side, for once. I need to know that someone… well, _anyone_ will stick up for me…"

As Anti-Wanda held her arms and shrank into herself, Anti-Cosmo was almost tortured by the sound of her pained voice. He watched her hopelessly as his eyes grew soft, and his mouth slightly hung open as he slowly took an intake of breath. It was almost too much to see Anti-Wanda so cut up. And as she finally lifted her head to catch his gaze once again, Anti-Wanda's sudden watery eyes shimmered through the thin cloud of brightly coloured chemical motes in the air, and her voice was barely audible as she asked,

"Anti-Cosmo… w-would you… would you stick up for me?"

He promptly swallowed a hard gulp. As she said this, Anti-Cosmo hesitated as he tried to think of something to reply with, but for once in his clever life, he was lost for words. His mind drew a torturous blank. And the more he stared back at Anti-Wanda's vulnerable eyes, the more he felt himself being pulled towards her.

He knew in his mind what he wanted to say. He knew he wanted to keep himself at a distance, he wanted to refuse everything that was happening and he wanted to keep her firmly at arm's length… but…

He knew in his heart… he wanted…

"…you shouldn't overthink things." He replied simply as he managed to turn his head away at last, despite being flushed with colour.

"Oh. Well, that's easy for me. I never overthink things." She told him with an easy-going smile.

And Anti-Cosmo grew jealous of her.

_I wish I could say the same…_

…

…

The day was finally done, and Anti-Cosmo could call it another successful productive day of work.

The Earth's sun was beginning to hide away behind the blanket of stormy clouds that covered the entire terrain of Anti-Fairy world, and Anti-Wanda groaned as she climbed down the stairs leading out of the studio. The darkness that fell over her as she re-entered the intimidating setting of her home world depressed her, and her head hung low as she lazily hovered to the lower level of the academy.

However, she perked up immediately at she spun quickly on her heels to turn towards Anti-Cosmo following close behind her. Anti-Cosmo's eyes flew open in complete surprise as he almost bumped straight into her, and he watched her incredulously as her ocean curls elegantly flew over her shoulders and perfectly framed her baby-shaped face. She lit up with a large goofy smile gracing her softened features.

"Walk me home?" Anti-Wanda casually asked him as she clasped her hands together behind her back and hovered backwards as if she was skating on air, "I have something to give you, but I left it in my room. Walk home with me so I can get it for you, okay?"

Anti-Cosmo once again had no idea what to expect from her, and once more, his intrigue was getting too much to just leave it at that. Anti-Cosmo nodded almost robotically in response, and watched in surprise as Anti-Wanda skipped into the air as if she was instantly made even happier. As she led him through the darkened corridors of the academy, Anti-Cosmo arched an eyebrow as a sudden thought had quickly occurred to him,

"Hold on a minute. Why should we walk home? Has it escaped you that we're magical beings?" Anti-Cosmo said unamused as Anti-Wanda curiously looked over her shoulder to him, "It wouldn't take us more than a second to teleport us to your dormitory by magic."

Anti-Wanda smiled innocently as she softly replied,

"That's exactly why we're walking. We'd spend more time together this way."

Immediately after she turned back to float happily down the corridor, she hadn't a clue that Anti-Cosmo had stopped in his tracks completely. His eyes were wide and his face heated up in a matter of seconds. His gaze absently wandered to his side as he covered his mouth with his hand, and he spent the moment trying his absolute best to calm down his racing heartbeat. But no matter how hard he tried, he could not calm down. Not while she was around.

_This girl…_

…

…

The couple arrived at Anti-Wanda's dormitory after a longer than average walk through the academy grounds, until the cracked streetlights blinked to life alongside the jagged streets of Anti-Fairy World. The stormy clouds grew denser as the evening grew closer, and the few hints of light that managed to spill across the terrain were the dull blood-soaked tints of colour spreading along the pavement beneath their feet.

Anti-Cosmo lingered at the gate entrance of Anti-Wanda's dormitory, and waited until Anti-Wanda could return with the all-clear. They both knew that it was school policy to keep boys out of the girl's dormitories after hours, but it was a rule that barely anyone followed. After all, it was in an anti-fairies' best interests to break as many rules as possible. Anti-Wanda found it all too easy to avert the attention of any authority nearby, and casually swung the gate open with her usual carefree grin.

But it wasn't the authorities that Anti-Wanda was mostly worried about.

"Wait here for a moment, okay? I want to give you something… but I think I left it under my pillow. I'll go get it for you." Anti-Wanda said quietly as she held the entrance door open for him.

Anti-Cosmo quickly scanned his surroundings, and noticed how the girl's dormitory was similar to his own. The kitchen door was situated on the right, and the lounge was attached to the hallway on his left passed the front porch. He lingered at the entrance for a moment as he nonchalantly straightened his sleeves, and Anti-Wanda had already began to wander further down the hallway without him.

"Ah, I knew I could smell something bad come into the room. Look who's just come home." A high-pitched voice loudly called from across the lounge, and a wave of laughter echoed soon after.

Anti-Cosmo's head snapped up immediately after he heard this. In an instant, his disgust grew all the more as he figured out that these people must be Anti-Wanda's roommates, and by the sounds of it, there was a small crowd of girls in the lounge chattering amongst themselves as Anti-Wanda froze in fear once she had become the subject of their conversation.

"It's hard to miss a smell like that. I once walked past a dead skunk in the road and I thought it was her!"

"Oh my god, you're such a bitch! That's insulting to the dead skunk!"

The obnoxious laughter followed once again, and Anti-Wanda could only shrink into herself all the more as her face lit up with white hot embarrassment. And as soon as Anti-Cosmo noticed how her eyes became watery and her bottom lip began to tremble, Anti-Cosmo couldn't take it anymore.

Quickly, he stepped from the front porch and walked to Anti-Wanda's side without hesitation. She looked up to him in surprise as she found herself shocked by his determination to step in, and his eyes grew hard as he stared straight at the five girls sitting in the lounge. And in turn, the girls immediately stopped laughing. Everyone in the academy knew Anti-Cosmo, and as soon as he walked through the hallway and glared directly at them all with anger flaring in his cold eyes, the girls had frozen in fear. The instant he saw them, he could read what kind of girls these were in seconds. With make-up caked over their faces and clothing that revealed almost every inch of their skin, they were very insecure women who looked like exact clones of each other. And the silence that dragged on was deafening - if a pin had dropped at that moment, it would have been as loud as a tree crashing down to Earth.

In an effort to create some peace, Anti-Wanda laid a gentle hand over Anti-Cosmo's arm and distracted him instantly.

"I'll show you to my room, okay? We'll have some privacy there." She told him softly and smiled gratefully as she pulled him through the hallway.

Immediately afterwards, the girls watched nervously as they began murmuring to each other under their breath. Their eyes never once flickered away from the couple as they continued down the hallway towards the bedrooms situated at the back of the building, but Anti-Cosmo was too infuriated to leave things as they were. Especially as he could clearly hear a harsh rumour beginning to circle amongst them:

"That's Anti-Cosmo, right? Why is someone like Anti-Wanda friends with a scary guy like that?"

"Y'know, even though he's, like, the scariest person in the entire academy, he's still kinda, like, hot… right?"

"Yeah, I was thinking that too. So, do you think they're…?"

"No! Wait… do you think? How could she possibly be…"

"You don't think so?"

"Well… I don't know! She's such a _loser,_ I'm surprised she's got a boyfriend at all."

"She's dating Anti-Juandissimo, loser number two. He's hardly out of her league."

"And do you think she's cheating on him with Anti-Cosmo? Ew! She should stick to her own kind!"

"Her own kind?"

"You know, losers. She should stick to dating losers like her. Anti-Cosmo is hot, intelligent, clearly not a loser… I should ask for his phone number…"

"I didn't know you were into sloppy seconds."

"I am not, shut up! You're gross."

"Anti-Wanda's far grosser, anyway. She's cheating on her loser boyfriend with the most powerful anti-fairy in the academy. How's that for the scandal of the century…"

"You know what I heard? I heard that Anti-Cosmo is personally tutoring her because she's too stupid to go to regular classes."

"So Anti-Cosmo is her teacher? Oh, I can guess what's going on here then! I bet she's opening her legs for a shot at a better grade."

"Oh my god, you're right! That's why they're going to her bedroom right now, it makes so much sense! What a total slut!"

"She's too much of an idiot to graduate any of her classes so she's been giving her teachers special 'favours' in exchange for a passing grade."

"She's such a skank."

"I always knew she was just a stupid whore…"

Anti-Cosmo couldn't hear another word of this.

All of a sudden, Anti-Cosmo turned around and ripped himself away from Anti-Wanda's desperate grasp. He rounded the corner of the hallway and caught the girl's attention once again as his piercing scowl rendered them frozen in terror. His chin lifted to the air as he truly felt that these girls were beneath him in every way, and winced disgustedly as he spat each word as if venom hung on to each one,

"Is this really what you girls do with your free time? Are your lives really so boring that you feel the need to project your own insecurities on to other people?" He asked them with a condescending tone that left the girls speechless, "I suggest from now on, you keep your small-minded comments to yourselves. It would be a shame to see your scholarship, or at the very least, your _life_ put to an end if one of your little inane rumours were to leave the confines of this room. Wouldn't you agree?"

"You… you wouldn't do that…" One of the girls meekly defended herself as her voice shook with absolute fear.

Anti-Cosmo chuckled darkly in response, and his voice grew colder as all signs of sympathy or compassion were void in his eyes. He looked all the more terrifying as his hair cast a shadow over his piercing emerald eyes and a sinister grin split his face,

"Of course I would. Or would you rather gamble your very existence on the slim chance that I might not?"

Suddenly, his quick speed launched himself towards the girl. She squeaked in surprise when she couldn't find the nerve within her to scream as Anti-Cosmo instantaneously appeared directly in front of her. His index and middle finger pushed her chin to the air, and the girl whimpered under her breath as she noticed how Anti-Cosmo's hand resembled the shape of a gun. The girls beside her had shuffled away in terror as they didn't dare to interfere.

"I assume you already know of my reputation, so I have to wonder if you would really put your life on the line like this. But even so, I must say… I do enjoy a challenge."

The girl squealed once again and her forehead visibly glistened with perspiration when Anti-Cosmo nudged her back even further. Then his eyes became darker as his voice grew all the more threatening,

"But if you do so, carve this into your memory; if you say anything, do anything, or so much as look at Anti-Wanda wrong, then I'll take all the make-up that you've slapped over your face and make you eat it so you can at least be pretty on the inside." The girl stared in disbelief, until Anti-Cosmo finally asked through his clenched teeth, "Do you understand me?"

She nodded erratically until she could finally breathe again once Anti-Cosmo stepped back away from her. He glanced to the other girls as a fair warning to all of them, and as this silent agreement sunk into the air, Anti-Cosmo promptly turned his back on the girls and sighed in triumph. Then he saw Anti-Wanda standing nearby in the hallway. Her hands were tightly clasped against her chest as she could feel her heartbeat racing impossibly fast.

Anti-Cosmo lingered beside her in the hallway for the moment. The silent atmosphere was warm as they exchanged glances, and almost absent-mindedly, Anti-Wanda held his gaze for longer than she anticipated as she remained simply in awe of him. Then, she quickly snapped out of it, as if she had just resurfaced from a trance, and bashfully shook her beetroot head,

"Oh, um…" She tried to restart her train of thought, but her mind drew a blank. Then, Anti-Cosmo patiently reminded her,

"You wanted to give me something?"

"Y-Yes, that's right. Sorry, um, this way…" Anti-Wanda vacantly turned down the hallway and led him away from the lounge. The girls anxiously watched them disappear from their sight, and neither one of them dared to ever speak of that moment again.

Anti-Cosmo followed Anti-Wanda from a close distance, and as they came nearer to her bedroom entrance, Anti-Wanda's hand hesitated over the door handle before her quietened voice suddenly caught Anti-Cosmo's attention,

"You didn't have to do that…"

Anti-Cosmo arched an eyebrow as he crossed his arms over his chest, and he ignored the light flush forming over his face,

"Those girls were annoying. I was simply putting them in their place. It's about time someone did." He affirmed nonchalantly as he stood his ground, "And nothing is more powerful in shaping a person's actions than the irreparable feeling of fear gripping at their very soul. Trust me, they won't be bothering you again from now on."

Anti-Wanda blinked at him for a moment as her mind wrapped around the idea, before she nodded understandably and finally turned the door handle down to open it,

"Ah, I see. I suppose that's true. As much as I wouldn't like to believe it… it's really fear that controls us the most." She said quietly as she stepped aside and held her hand out to guide him inside, "Come in for a moment, okay?"

Anti-Cosmo quickly glanced at her as he walked inside, and noted how distant her voice became as she reflected to herself. He wondered if what he'd said touched a nerve, or something hit too close to home, but as Anti-Cosmo wandered inside the room, he was frozen in place when he suddenly realised he was inside Anti-Wanda's bedroom.

He heard the door click shut behind him, and his ears heated up in response. It was at that moment when it finally sunk in: he was alone with Anti-Wanda in her own bedroom. For the longest time, he couldn't even hear the sound of his own pounding heartbeat. But he slowly calmed down as he looked around the room and scanned his surroundings. He wasn't at all surprised by how messy it was. Her bedroom had her personality all over it. Anti-Wanda's desk was stockpiled with folders and books laid out in uneven stacks, cans and bottles were scattered around the floor alongside discarded clothing in untouched heaps, and he noticed there were pieces of clothing hanging in odd places all around the room. Shirts were hanging off the ceiling fan, shoes were idly hung on the bedposts…

Then Anti-Cosmo's eyes quickly shot away from the top of her wardrobe door as soon as he accidentally caught a glimpse of her black bra hanging on top of it.

"Hey, are you alright?" Anti-Wanda asked as she suddenly laid a supportive hand on his arm, "You look a little flushed…"

"I'm fine! Don't worry about it." Anti-Cosmo told her too quickly as he flinched away. His reddened face hadn't cooled down at all as Anti-Wanda closely inspected him with suspicion. Again, Anti-Cosmo felt too exposed around her, as she found it too easy to look straight through him. There was no point in lying to her. She noticed in an instant when he acted strange.

But she shrugged it off as she walked over to her window. Her gaze wandered off into the distance as she succumbed to the silence that blanketed over them. And Anti-Cosmo knew then: it seemed there was something else on her mind.

Anti-Cosmo was always good at reading a person's actions, he always knew what was going through a person's mind… but he just couldn't pinpoint anything with Anti-Wanda. He wondered if it was because he didn't know her well enough to recognise when something was wrong with her… but somehow, he could tell…

"So, um… thanks for helping me out back there." Anti-Wanda began as she leant backwards against the window sill, and slowly brought her distant gaze back to him, "You really are as fearless as all the rumours say about you…"

"Heh, you flatter me. But they're not rumours for any reason, I'll tell you that much." Anti-Cosmo boasted as he proudly rested his fists on his hips, "It's not actually that hard to keep up this reputation either. If you think about it, I just gave you a demonstration. You saw how I'm able to defuse harsh rumours that may circulate about me before they get any worse. It's the fear factor that makes a person paranoid. If they believe in this dangerous persona that I've created, then no one would ever dream about sullying my name. They believe their life would be in danger if they dared to try."

Anti-Wanda's eyebrows rose with curiosity as she asked,

"And… have you actually, um… _disposed_ of anyone who tried?"

Again, Anti-Cosmo froze up. He remembered the last time Anti-Wanda had asked him if he had ever killed anyone. She asked him this question on the day they met. And he remembered how he answered it the last time. His answer was… less than pleasing. Once more, Anti-Cosmo couldn't think of a response that he was happy with, so he became annoyed and dismissed the question entirely,

"Does that really matter?" He snapped as he crossed his arms in a childish huff, "The point is that they believe in the rumours. You'll find that the imagination is much worse than the truth anyway."

Anti-Wanda giggled to herself as she saw right through him once again.

"But you've never straight up killed someone before?"

Anti-Cosmo's eye twitched in annoyance. She had asked the same question in the exact same fashion as before. And Anti-Cosmo didn't find this nearly as funny as Anti-Wanda clearly did. In fact, he felt she was intentionally challenging him. And so in silence, Anti-Cosmo's burning hot hand reached into his pocket and tightly gripped on to his wand. He could feel his magic building up intensely within his fingers, and he wondered for a moment…

…_would I really go through with what I intended to do the first time we met? Would I really… _dispose_ of her…?_

"Anyway, you're right. That wasn't the point of this." Anti-Wanda's laughter died down as her voice suddenly softened. Anti-Cosmo kept his hand in his pocket with his fist curled around his wand, but he stopped all together when he was suddenly caught in Anti-Wanda's genuine smile, "The point is… you put yourself and your reputation on the line to stand up for me. And that's… that's more than I could have ever hoped for from you…"

Suddenly, Anti-Cosmo's eyes grew wide as he realised that was exactly what he had done. And she understood that very well. Instantly, the wand in his grasp became too insignificant to remember…

"I asked you earlier if you would, um, stick up for me when I needed someone, a-and I remember you didn't exactly give me a straight answer…" Anti-Wanda's silhouette almost lit up alongside her bright crooked smile as the dull reddened light from the outside faded over her figure, and she sighed with sincere happiness as she told him with her heart on her sleeve, "…but after what you've done for me today… I know… I know for certain that you would. So, thank you, Anti-Cosmo. To know that someone out there is willing to do that for me, it... it just makes me hopeful. And don't worry. Your reputation is safe with me."

Anti-Cosmo… was simply blown away by her again.

Once again, Anti-Wanda had demonstrated her ability to render him speechless, with his heart crashing against his chest in a desperate attempt to escape. And his throat ran dry as his mouth hung agape with wordless awe. Quickly, he coughed into his hand as he took a minute to himself to regain his composure, as he had done many times before around her. He was baffled by how easily she was able to break through his walls. Never had he met someone so challenging in every little thing they do. Never had he met someone who could shake down his confidence with so little effort.

Anti-Wanda was something else, and she was too clueless to realise… she could very easily be Anti-Cosmo's greatest enemy.

"Look, I… uh, i-it's no problem, alright?" Anti-Cosmo told her unsteadily as he refused to look at her smile in fear that he may lose track of his thoughts again, "N-now, isn't there something you wanted to give me?"

"Yes! Absolutely! I promise I'll stop stalling now." Anti-Wanda laughed as she wandered over to her bed on the far side of the bedroom.

Once she fell backwards against the bed, she giggled like a toddler as she bounced slightly on the springy mattress. Anti-Cosmo noted how much fun she made of everything, and curiously found it to be a lovely trait of hers. Then, he paused in surprise as he saw Anti-Wanda pause and wait for him patiently as she patted the space beside her. Anti-Cosmo had paused entirely when he realised: she wanted him to sit next to her. On her bed.

Hesitantly, Anti-Cosmo ignored the oncoming flush forming over his face, and decided to push through his nerves and go through with it, despite every other sane thought in his mind screaming at him to refuse. Anti-Wanda had to withhold her laughter as Anti-Cosmo rigidly sat at a distance beside her, and his widened eyes stared in any other direction other than at her. Anti-Wanda bit down on her bottom lip as she snorted,

"Relax, will you? I told you it was just under my pillow, see…"

Anti-Wanda dug her hand underneath the pillow beside her, and Anti-Cosmo peaked over to see what she had promptly fished out. And he took a sharp intake of breath as he looked over this incredible artefact that she held proudly into the air.

"I don't believe it. Is that… an amulet of the gods?"

"Oh, please. It's not nearly as prestigious as it looks." Anti-Wanda laughed as she cradled the chain of beads in her hands, and affectionately threaded it through her fingers with a soft sigh, "But still, it's just as important to me. It was… given to me long ago. By my mother."

Anti-Cosmo immediately noticed how sombre Anti-Wanda sounded as she looked over the amulet in her grasp. She held it so carefully as if it were made of glass, and held it up in the air for Anti-Cosmo to inspect every significant inch of it. Anti-Cosmo noted how intricately crafted it was made, as each bead withheld a small illustration engraved on the inside. They were pictures of scarabs and wide eyes, and after a few seconds of inspection, Anti-Cosmo recognised the style.

"Did your mother obtain this in Egypt, around the time of the Middle Kingdom?"

"Yes, she did! Anti-Cosmo, you're incredible…" Anti-Wanda praised him in amazement, and he replied with a bright flush forming over his face once again. Then, as Anti-Wanda lay the amulet delicately in her palms, she calmly turned to him, crossed her legs on the bed, and closed her eyes as she spoke in an incredibly serious tone that shook Anti-Cosmo to the core, "…before she, um, disappeared, my mother gave this to me almost like a parting gift. And I remember what she told me as she passed it to me – she explained that our existence is dark and dangerous, but it is our existence that brings balance to the universe. The fate of all life on Earth simply can't advance without the perfect balance of good fortune and bad luck."

"Your mother is a very wise woman." Anti-Cosmo nodded in admiration.

But Anti-Wanda's eyes grew dark and distance as she flatly continued,

"She… she was an unhappy woman. She hated herself, she hated what she was and her responsibility as an anti-fairy. She wished that she didn't exist. She wished… she wished that I didn't exist… just so I didn't have to endure suffering through a life as an anti-fairy."

The way that Anti-Wanda had vacantly stared at the amulet in her hands had drawn a sharp shiver down Anti-Cosmo's spine. He had never seen Anti-Wanda so cold and bitter about anything before, and once he had, he felt the most unnerving feeling shoot through his very soul. Then, as the terrifying moment passed, Anti-Wanda solemnly continued,

"At first, I didn't understand it at all. How could I… how could _anyone_ suffer because of their own birth? But, as I got older, I realised what she meant. We were born with a purpose, we were born with a desire deeply ingrained in our subconscious: bring bad luck to humanity. Keep the universe balanced. In doing so, all life will continue. Our lives will always be eternal. That is why this ankh hangs at the front of this amulet. It's a constant reminder of why we're alive, and what we're put into this universe to do."

Anti-Wanda cradled the ankh in her palm and stroked the detailed indents carved into it. Anti-Cosmo knew that an ankh represented endlessly living, and he found it very fitting considering the nature of their immortality. However, the way that Anti-Wanda looked at the symbol, she spoke as if she resented it more than anything,

"We suffer to fulfil our duties without question, that's what it means. The moment we are born, the meaning of our existence is already decided for us. We're anti-fairies, and we strive to conform to our purpose like mindless puppets. And it doesn't matter if I'm good at it or not, this is what I'm meant to do…"

Anti-Wanda choked out a bitter laugh.

"My mother left me with the belief that it is possible to change our fate. We have the power to tip the balance of the universe and tear the fabric of existence… if we so choose." Anti-Wanda's distant voice turned colder than ever before, and a harsh shiver struck down Anti-Cosmo's spine, before Anti-Wanda's innocent smile suddenly returned once again, "But, y'know, I think my mother only said this because deep down… she just wanted to be a fairy. Nothing more, nothing less. That's why she passed on this amulet of good luck charms. She always defied her nature and only wanted to bring good luck to the humans. And I suppose, in a sense, even an anti-fairy is in need of some good luck every now and again. That's why I've always kept it with me."

Then, slowly, Anti-Wanda wrapped the amulet around Anti-Cosmo's hands and clasped them together between hers. He froze as he felt the warmth of her palms gently embrace him, and felt his breath being drawn out between his lips when she brought herself forward to rest her forehead against his. Gradually, she closed her eyes, and she concentrated hard as she said,

"I… want to pass some of my good luck on to you. I feel like, um, I was pretty fortunate to have met you, since only really good things have happened when you're around. So I want to return the favour somehow. Hopefully th-this will make up for everything you have done for me so far. M-maybe this will kick-start the future you've wanted. Maybe… maybe this will be the beginning of something truly great… if I can help even a little bit, then maybe… um…"

She trailed off into thin air as her face hurriedly flushed with colour the moment she opened her eyes again. She didn't quite realise exactly what she had done by holding Anti-Cosmo's hands gently within her own, and by resting her head tenderly against his. As she held her gaze towards Anti-Cosmo for a few moments longer, she hadn't truly realised… how beautiful Anti-Cosmo's emerald eyes were. He always looked so dark and calculating, and his usual perceptive gaze gave off a sophisticated vibe that had intimidated many of the anti-fairy population. But… the closer she got, and the better she could see… she clearer she could read him.

Anti-Cosmo's hardened stare gave it all away. He couldn't withhold himself from her for much longer. He felt her slender fingers take a gentle hold of his hands with the string of beads intertwined between the two, and the way she fit so easily in his palms had struck a heavy blow to his racing heart. And as her forehead had pressed against his, as her dark curls twisted against Anti-Cosmo's unkempt hair like two waves from the ocean flowing together, Anti-Cosmo felt her unsteady breath right next to his as their lips were only inches away from each other.

Anti-Cosmo kept deathly still. He slowly blinked as his heavy eyes were almost entranced by her. Whilst Anti-Wanda curiously explored the depth of Anti-Cosmo's vacant eyes, Anti-Cosmo stayed frozen in her gentle grasp. For the first time, in all of the time that he's known her, Anti-Cosmo wondered silently to himself... if Anti-Wanda was his good fortune… or exactly the opposite…

_I wonder… if the answer really matters… do I even care what you are…?_

Anti-Wanda's blush suddenly flourished over her face as she slowly realised how incredibly intimate this was becoming. And it was the sound of Anti-Wanda's sudden intake of breath that had been the single instance to snap Anti-Cosmo back to reality.

Suddenly, their hands broke apart as they flinched away almost in synchronicity. Both of their faces were as red as a beetroot as the air around them grew hot and heavy. It took a moment for them both to find the right state of mind to say anything, and as Anti-Cosmo recognised his heartbeat slow down to a relatively even pace, he finally asked her with a cough to clear his throat,

"So… is that all you asked me over for? To give me good luck?"

Anti-Wanda tenderly held the amulet in her hands as she bashfully nodded.

"Um, yeah. I-I guess so."

All of a sudden, out of nowhere, Anti-Cosmo loudly burst into a fit of laughter. Anti-Wanda almost jumped out of her skin in surprise, and clutched at her frightened heart in her chest as she watched him in bewilderment. She certainly wasn't expecting that kind of reaction, especially after what had just occurred. Anti-Cosmo then wiped away his tears of laughter once he began to finally calm down, and looked over to her at his side with a wide fanged smile and a slight flush lingering over his face.

"Anti-Wanda… you truly do have a simple mind." He told her as she blinked in surprise, and once he saw her eyebrow raise in wonder, Anti-Cosmo commented further with a big grin, "Don't worry, it's endearing. You have many good qualities about you, Anti-Wanda. I hope you know that. I-It'll be beneficial… in our conquest for world domination, I mean."

"Oh! Well… thank you!" Anti-Wanda smiled in return as her blush hadn't cooled down at all, and her gentle gaze swapped from her amulet back to him, "I… um, if you're not in any hurry to go home, I can show you some more spells I've been working on! If you think they'll help you, then I'd, um…"

"Sure. Why not?" Anti-Cosmo shrugged as he pushed back all his reasons why he wanted to stay with her to the back of his mind, and bared his teeth into a sarcastic grin, "I'll put this down as extra-curricular studies. After all, I can't let you forget that I am officially your tutor, can I?"

As Anti-Cosmo rested an idle hand against his burning hot cheek, Anti-Wanda could only pout in response with a look of annoyance piercing right back at him,

"C'mon, do you have to? Now there's too much pressure on me if this turns out to be graded…"

Anti-Cosmo only laughed again, and Anti-Wanda sighed with irritation before she pulled out her wand to fill the air with an assortment of magical spells surrounding the both of them. And as Anti-Wanda busied herself to create the very best spells she could create, and as Anti-Cosmo commended her for trying her hardest just for him, there was a lingering heaviness that refused to leave the couple alone for the rest of the evening. And it refused to leave until they parted ways… many, many hours later.

…

…

…

Finally, the day had closed and the evening soon came. Anti-Cosmo decided to take a walk back to his dormitory, despite the darkness of the evening enveloping the streets with barely any working street lights to guide his way. However, Anti-Cosmo was able to easily convince himself that a walk wouldn't be a bad idea, and he refused to believe that this had anything to do with the girl he had spent his entire day with.

But, the further he walked, the colder the air had become. Somehow, the idea of a walk was wearing thin, but Anti-Cosmo was adamant that it was just his imagination getting the better of him. As he refused to give in to his growing fear, Anti-Cosmo powered through the night with his hand firmly grasping his wand in his pocket.

And, almost immediately afterwards, he recognised a familiar rustle of leaves sound a little up ahead of his path. His sharp eyes quickly met up with the noise, and with a swift flick of his arm, he drew out his wand and pointed it promptly in the direction of a silhouette suddenly standing overhead. Anti-Cosmo's intimidating magical power crackled around his arm and shot over his entire figure as he was more than ready to strike down whoever was in his way. But, he gradually lowered his wand as he finally recognised who it was.

"Oh. Anti-Cupid." He voiced quietly, and withdrew his wand as his shoulders fell along with his guard, "I would have thought you'd be home by now. What're you doing out so late?"

Anti-Cupid was as unmoving as a statue. His frozen glare exuberated his silent fury as his hands clenched into fists at his sides. Anti-Cosmo squinted his eyes in suspicion, and before he could ask what was wrong, Anti-Cupid lowered his head and his voice, and his eyes grew incredibly dark as he suddenly warned him,

"Don't get in my way."

"Wh-what? What are you talking about?" Anti-Cosmo was immediately flustered. As soon as he figured out that Anti-Cupid must have known what had happened that day, Anti-Cosmo began to sweat under the pressure as he felt that defending himself was becoming even more difficult. Then he waved a dismissive hand at Anti-Cupid as Anti-Cosmo looked up to the stormy skies, and struggled to respond confidently, "Do... do you mean… Anti-Wanda and I? Again? Y-you're becoming too obsessed with the notion, Anti-Cupid. Honestly, th-there's absolutely nothing going… on…"

Then, as he returned his gaze back to where Anti-Cupid stood, he was stopped in his tracks once he found that Anti-Cupid had suddenly vanished. Anti-Cosmo figured he must have left the very instant that Anti-Cosmo had torn his eyes away from him, and the cold breeze that brushed past him left behind an ominous feeling of another presence silently watching him.

And as the street lamps flickered on and off in the darkness, Anti-Cosmo continued his walk home, unnerved and confused.

…

…

…

_Chapter Four End. Chapter Five on the way soon…_


End file.
